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Scranton to NJ railroad gets boost
BY BORYS KRAWCZENIUK STAFF WRITER
09/15/2007
The proposed passenger railroad from Scranton to metropolitan New York City got another boost this week, when the U.S. Senate approved an appropriations bill that includes $2 million to finish the design of the $350 million project.
It's another small step in a project that remains many years from completion.
The money was in the Senate's version of the 2008 Transportation/Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Bill.
The bill also includes:
n $2 million for the state Department of Transportation for preliminary engineering and final design of the more than $1 billion widening of Interstate 81 between Clarks Summit and Nanticoke.
n $1 million to extend the access road in the Valley View Business Park in Jessup.
The House passed its version of the transportation bill in July and negotiators for both houses will meet soon to work out compromises on differences in the bills.
Larry Malski, executive director of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, said the project remains bogged down in getting approval of its environmental assessment from the Federal Transit Administration.
"We're hoping it's close," Mr. Malski said.
He said, in a best-case scenario, which assumes all funding falls into place as planned, the project could be running in 2011 or 2012. But it has blown past every predicted starting date, and every previous best-case scenario has fallen apart.
The widening of I-81 to three lanes in each direction is even further in the future, with no date set for construction. Construction is expected to happen in phases, with the most heavily traveled stretch - between the Central Scranton Expressway and Davis Street interchanges - expected to be widened first.
Construction of the Valley View Business Park access road extension is expected to begin this fall, opening up 730 acres for development.
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I like the fact that they are widening that stretch of I-81. That area can be hell to drive in now when there is a lot of traffic. The amount of truck traffic is very heavy and this should aleviate it somewhat. The railroad project is still years away, but I would like the convience of going to NYC by train in the future instead of always driving there.
I like the fact that they are widening that stretch of I-81. That area can be hell to drive in now when there is a lot of traffic. The amount of truck traffic is very heavy and this should aleviate it somewhat. The railroad project is still years away, but I would like the convience of going to NYC by train in the future instead of always driving there.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I-81 was only originally designed to accomodate 40,000 vehicles per day, but it now carries around 80,000 in certain stretches (especially between the Central Scranton Expressway and Davis Street/Montage Mountain Road). Traffic flows much more smoothly just north of Scranton when the highway widens to three lanes in each direction as you approach the I-380/I-84/U.S. Route 6 split. Another gripe I have about I-81 is the short length of many onramps and offramps that has caused many near-misses. For example, if you want to get onto I-81 Northbound from Highway 315 Southbound (the way I take to get from my Pittston home to Scranton), you're IMMEDIATELY dumped onto the highway once the onramp gets parallel to the interstate, which forces you to come to a complete stop during high-volume periods and then put the pedal to the metal. I've had to do this before, only to be nearly rear-ended by motorists behind me on the same onramp who don't realize I'm at a standstill due to the congestion. Another bad onramp is if you want to get onto I-81 Southbound from Main Avenue near Schiff's in North Scranton. The onramp suddenly turns at 90-degrees and then you have nearly no acceleration lane before being dumped onto this similarly-busy stretch of freeway. One other gripe I have about I-81 Northbound is the Pittston/Dupont Exit (175) at rush-hour. A hell of a lot of people from Greater Pittston (including my father and I) work in Wilkes-Barre and commute home via that offramp at rush-hour---so much so that traffic has backed-up all the way back onto the interstate at times, causing near-misses. I can recall a few months ago when a tractor-trailer took the exit, wasn't expecting traffic to be backed up all the way up the offramp, and had to slam on his brakes while sliding down the shoulder, narrowly missing taking out every vehicle like dominoes! As an individual who has been violently rear-ended on this very same offramp for the very same reason (congestion) in the past, I find it curious that supervisors in both Jenkins Township and Pittston Township are welcoming so much new growth and sprawl at a time when our existing infrastructure can't handle the population we have now. I dread what this offramp will look like once the thousands of new employees are commuting to CenterPoint, the thousands of shoppers/employees are heading to the Pittston Crossings Mall,
and hundreds of new residents are bound for upcoming housing developments in the area. You're going to see a horrific chain-reaction pile-up on I-81 Northbound near Exit #175 in the upcoming years---all it will take is one trucker traveling in the right-hand lane on I-81 and not noticing the backed-up traffic while fiddling with his cell phone to cause tragedy, and I can't believe our idiot governor thought that building a new hockey arena in Pittsburgh was more important than SAFETY!
As far as the commuter rail is concerned, I'm likewise looking forward to it. My friends and I currently take the JoJo's Travelers bus from Pittston to Manhattan for our pilgrimages to the Big Apple, but riding in more comfort on a train would suit me just fine. If I end up having to work part-time in Scranton and part-time in NYC in the future for my entry-level position in an accounting firm, I'd likewise love to have a commuter rail available. Daniel maintains that the new rail will only be used to import trash, but I fail to see why they'd load passenger rail trains with garbage bound for our landfills? Like it or not there is a growing link between NEPA and NJ/NYC, and providing people with easier means to access all areas is a great way to reduce traffic congestion on I-80, which is sheer pandemonium once you start to get into Central Jersey.
By the time they start adding the third lane on I-81 (in the article it says even further into the future than the rail date of 2011/2012, I can only imagine that they will start road construction sometime before 2020), they are going to need a 4th lane by then. I know the director of the W-B/Scranton airport and he said the latest count of vehicles on I-81 at the airport exit is 70,000 a day. All the NY/NJ transplants will eventually feel right at home when I-81 becomes a parking lot.
And in some places it already is, if you travel on I-81 south from the Central Scranton Expressway to the Moosic exit, it's sometimes bumper to bumper or cars going at most 10 mph from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm then it gets congested again on I-81 south from Pittston to the Wilkes-Barre exit during the evening rush. Each year they wait to start widening, each year the price is going to go up, right now it's $1 billion, by the time they start it will probably be $1.5 billion.
By the time they start adding the third lane on I-81 (in the article it says even further into the future than the rail date of 2011/2012, I can only imagine that they will start road construction sometime before 2020), they are going to need a 4th lane by then. I know the director of the W-B/Scranton airport and he said the latest count of vehicles on I-81 at the airport exit is 70,000 a day. All the NY/NJ transplants will eventually feel right at home when I-81 becomes a parking lot.
And in some places it already is, if you travel on I-81 south from the Central Scranton Expressway to the Moosic exit, it's sometimes bumper to bumper or cars going at most 10 mph from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm then it gets congested again on I-81 south from Pittston to the Wilkes-Barre exit during the evening rush. Each year they wait to start widening, each year the price is going to go up, right now it's $1 billion, by the time they start it will probably be $1.5 billion.
I travel I-81 Southbound each morning rush-hour from Pittston (175) to Wilkes-Barre (170) on my way to classes at King's College. The other morning I noticed a sea of brakelights up ahead and thought to myself "Great. Sudden emergency bridge repairs are going to make me late for class." Traffic slowed to about 40 miles per hour in both lanes and continued this way for a few miles until we picked up pace again to about 60. It was at this time that I approached the hilltop curve near all the billboards and Mohegan Sun and noticed there was no obstruction in the distance holding everyone up---it was sheerly congestion causing this! I'm fortunate in that I only need to utilize what I now call "The 81" (to reference what people in L.A. call their gridlocked freeways), for about five miles each way to Wilkes-Barre or about ten miles each way to Scranton, but for those who commute from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre or vice-versa at rush-hour, it must be a true pain in the rear-end!
In the long-term widening I-81 first to six lanes, then eight lanes, etc. is not going to be sustainable. We need to also investigate making I-476 toll-free PERMANENTLY between Clarks Summit and Wilkes-Barre, re-establishing commuter rail service through Scranton, Pittston, and Wilkes-Barre, better integrating our inter-county bus services, etc. The main problem we have here in NEPA is that everyone is so sprawled out that nobody can feasibly carpool---I notice on I-81 that 9/10 of the vehicles at rush-hour contain lone occupants. My father works two blocks from my campus in Downtown Wilkes-Barre, so we're currently brainstorming to see if it would be feasible for me to drive him to and from work everyday to help bring at least ONE vehicle off the 81 freeway, but that's still only a small drop in the bucket. I think I-81 will only be getting much, much worse before it gets better, especially now that Lackawanna/Luzerne Counties are soon going to be growing again in terms of population once Monroe County starts to become overpopulated and undesirable (I already see a lot of property transfers now in these two counties going to people who lived in Monroe County and are trying to "escape the city.") I-81, at this rate, could hit the 100,000 vehicles per day milestone by the time it is widened to six or eight lanes through the metroplex. This is totally unacceptable, and our state officials ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting sports ahead of our public infrastructure.
Paul you do realize that more than one train can use the same set of tracks don't you? The train will be the worse thing to happen to this area. Low budget transportation, low visibilty and the fact that someone else is driving is exactly what would be the perfect way to transport drugs and other illegal items to our area from NJ/NY area. It will be the double edged kiss of death. The freight trains will also be able to haul trash to our landfill, there is only one near the tracks, the side lines will used to side the trash trains as the commuters trains pass or come thru. Again these will not be express trains so it will be at least if more than twice the time by car. Also when was the last time you took a Amtrak commuter train? To think that they are more comfortable than a bus is a joke.....I took the commuter from DC to Philly and it was as bad as any bus that I have ridden on. Again just because they put something out there under the guise of economic development does not mean that it a good thing. What I like about our area is the closeness to NY and Philly for us but the distance for the bad apples to get here. Why do you feel that we need to force the NY scene down the throats of the people of this area. Who do you think is going to be buying those 19% increases in homes for sale here? You cannot honestly tell me that a huge influx of low income families from the NY area is a good thing can you? Remember the low/mod or high income families can afford to purchase homes in the upper hill or the brubs or greenridge. A $300,000 home in Greenridge would be like a $1,000,000 in NJ /NY. I have friends that bought a $300,000 fixer upper in Morristown NJ and turned it over for $700,000 when done. Demographics are never taken into account around here. The majority of the homes for sale are under $150,000 in this city, who will be buying them? Do you think that its a good idea to bring in those knids of families when we currently have a shrinking PD and they are the lowest paid in the state so who are they hiring? Not to metion the influx of the children on our school system which undoubtly drive our school taxes thru the roof. Also lets remember that the low income illegal children in the SHS are the ones resposible for bringing TB back to area that has not seen it since the 50's. This area is not ready for it and just because you and your little group think its a great idea does not mean that the area will benefit from it. Again you seem to look past the overall affects for the imediate gratification you will receive from it. IMHO
I think that the expansion of our highways is a great idea and we need it but the trains are and will be the worse thing to happen our town in a long time.
Paul, that exit on-ramp that you speak of on I-81 from Main Ave in Scranton is very dangerous. My mother got into an accident there a few years ago and you do have to very careful when merging on to the interstate from that area.
Dan does make some good points about the railroad project. If the train impacts the area negatively, I would not be in favor of it. If it becomes a means to shuttle illegal drugs and other items of the like, I say no way. We would need a lot of security on these trains to prevent that. So I guess I'm up in the air on this one. I like the convience factor to NYC, but I don't want the negative things from the city to come up to NEPA and rear it's ugly head.
In the long-term widening I-81 first to six lanes, then eight lanes, etc. is not going to be sustainable. We need to also investigate making I-476 toll-free PERMANENTLY between Clarks Summit and Wilkes-Barre, re-establishing commuter rail service through Scranton, Pittston, and Wilkes-Barre, better integrating our inter-county bus services, etc.
It would be nice to have the turnpike free from Wilkes-Barre to Clarks Summit. I would try and make some high speed connectors between I-476 and I-81 if they did make it free, so you don't have to go through those "trumpet" exit ramps.
I think light rail from Carbondale all the way down the valley to Nanticoke would be interesting, with stops along the way in towns like Blakely, Dickson City, Olyphant, Scranton, the airport, Old Forge, Pittston, Plains and Wilkes-Barre or even route it over the river to West Pittston, Exeter, Wyoming, Forty Fort, Kingston, then into Wilkes Barre. The costs would probably be way too high, and the ridership probably way too low to cost-justify it, but you can always dream. Plus the stations would have to be in walking distances to jobs and places of interest, like malls and other shops and stores, the airport, PNC Field and the Wachovia Arena for it to work properly and get people off of the highways.
One postive would be the fact there are already some abondon rail right of ways that could be used for a light rail line. You could also have two spurs, one going to the Abingtons and one going to the Back Mountains. There was the Laurel Line back in the day and the street cars that went from Scranton all the way to Lake Winola through the Abingtons.
You also used to be able to take a trolley to Moosic Lakes in the day and the gravity line went to Honesdale from Scranton. When the buses were limited and the roads few it made sense but now, we could never justify the cost of any those rails in todays time and dollars when cars are so prevalent. It would be nice but I doubt any of the people from the Abingtons would riding the train to Scranton when they could just drive there in 5 or ten minutes. The overall idea is grand but I think that the reality of what that train will be bringing to our area is far worse and less desirable then any gain we might receive here on this end.
I'm still undecided on this whole train coming to Scranton. I do see pros and cons. But if the cons outweigh the pros, then I would have to say it's not good for the area.
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As an individual who has been violently rear-ended on this very same offramp for the very same reason (congestion) in the past, I find it curious that supervisors in both Jenkins Township and Pittston Township are welcoming so much new growth and sprawl at a time when our existing infrastructure can't handle the population we have now. I dread what this offramp will look like once the thousands of new employees are commuting to CenterPoint, the thousands of shoppers/employees are heading to the Pittston Crossings Mall,
Like it or not there is a growing link between NEPA and NJ/NYC, and providing people with easier means to access all areas is a great way to reduce traffic congestion on I-80, which is sheer pandemonium once you start to get into Central Jersey.
