“Scranton, Mount Pocono, East Stroudsburg,” Larry Malski, said calling out stops like a conductor on a train crossing from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. “Blairstown, Dover, Morristown, Newark and then Penn Station.”
Malski listed the stations on Tuesday when updating members of Lackawanna/Luzerne Metropolitan Planning Organization on progress toward establishing rail service between Scranton and New York City.
A train could make the trip in 2 hours 50 minutes, Malski said.
Getting the first train rolling, however, might still take years.
Malski, president of Pennsylvania Regional Railroad Authority, has been working with government and business leaders for years to re-start service that ended 45 years ago.
Progress has been encouraging.
About two years ago when Scranton applied with more than 100 communities that wanted to open a passenger rail corridor, the federal government narrowed the list to 69 that could potentially get funding.
“Of those, four advanced, and we’re one of them,” Malski said after the MPO meeting.
The Scranton project received federal money to create a service development plan.
Malski said budgets, preliminary engineering and other preliminary work is being done now during what he called Stage 2 of planning, which he hopes will end by the end of this year so the project will be in Stage 3 or final engineering by this time next year.
“Once you complete Stage 3, you get money for full construction, he said.
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has taken over as the project’s lead applicant, which is significant because PennDOT can supply money for planning and engineering. The department also runs the passenger service for two other Amtrak corridors in Pennsylvania, one connects Philadelphia to Harrisburg and the other ties Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.
The regional rail authority owns 60 miles of track and the stations on the route between Scranton and Delaware Water Gap. East of the Water Gap, the project partners with New Jersey Transit and New Jersey Department of Transportation for the route to New York City, while Amtrak owns the last seven miles into Penn Station in Manhattan.
Estimates for building the line are from $800 million to $1.2 billion.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill has funding in place to add passenger rail, which the current federal budget continues.
A study two years ago, estimated 473,000 riders would travel on the Scranton-New York route, which would start with three trains a day. The service might generate $84 million of economic activity, including tourism, the study found.
Malski looks at the growing recreation market in the Poconos that might draw riders from New York and New Jersey. Also, 13 colleges and universities are along the route.
“That’s another another tiny example of the ridership out there,” Malski said.
He considers how traffic developed after train service began between Boston and Brunswick, Maine in 2012 on a line dubbed the Downeaster.
An old air base was reborn with apartments and shops in Brunswick, home to 21,500 residents and Bowdoin College, where other businesses and a hotel grew around the $24 million station and visitor’s center. The Downeaster began in 2001 connecting Portland, the capital of Maine, with Boston, and has increased the number of trains per day from two to five since then.
“That’s an example of what’s happened,” Malski said. “Ridership has really grown.”