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The ridership exists. The infrastructure is what's non-existent. Many of the tracks are, as has been previously stated, in a dire need of repair and/or upgrading. That won't happen anytime soon and neither will the bickering between the states involved and the rail line companies as to who and how much will be paid by each towards those repairs and/or upgrades.
Well, technically it's a fairly small amount of rail with just 21 miles of track and repairs needed for bridges, but with an already dedicated right-of-way, right? It shouldn't take very long, but it probably will.
The ridership exists. The infrastructure is what's non-existent. Many of the tracks are, as has been previously stated, in a dire need of repair and/or upgrading. That won't happen anytime soon and neither will the bickering between the states involved and the rail line companies as to who and how much will be paid by each towards those repairs and/or upgrades.
I don't know what you consider "ridership" but according to figures from 2018 the far-west stations near I-80 in Hackettstown and Netcong average 85 and 82 riders per day, respectively. Click on the link and scroll all the way down to stations #138 and #139 out of 152 total. The link doesn't tell you that there are 6 trains a day out of Hackettstown and 9 a day out of Netcong.
It just seems like a lot of trouble and expense to go through, to restore an early 20th century rail connection that will not be used because of Work from Home popularity and the exodus of jobs from city centers, even if more people do move out here to escape crime and disease.
Don't get me wrong, I like trains. I just don't see it as economically viable or even a "green technology" play, with autonomous EV's on the horizon.
I don't know what you consider "ridership" but according to figures from 2018 the far-west stations near I-80 in Hackettstown and Netcong average 85 and 82 riders per day, respectively. Click on the link and scroll all the way down to stations #138 and #139 out of 152 total. The link doesn't tell you that there are 6 trains a day out of Hackettstown and 9 a day out of Netcong.
It just seems like a lot of trouble and expense to go through, to restore an early 20th century rail connection that will not be used because of Work from Home popularity and the exodus of jobs from city centers, even if more people do move out here to escape crime and disease.
Don't get me wrong, I like trains. I just don't see it as economically viable or even a "green technology" play, with autonomous EV's on the horizon.
It does bear mentioning that Scranton is an order of magnitude more populous than either Hackettstown or Netcong which would ostensibly push ridership up, though the longer distance would work counter to that. I guess there's also the question of whether or not Scranton itself can be a destination for commuters and visitors in which case its ridership wouldn't be just from Scranton to NYC, but potentially smaller cities to Scranton. If that's true, then it means ridership going the other way could have some traffic which would make these stations's ridership higher.
I don't think people taking trains from either Hackettstown or Netcong are all borough residents. Lots of them come from surrounding area. Still they are only pulling in 82-85 people a day. And I know Scranton wouldn't be the only station on the line. The train would probably also stop at Tobyhanna, Mt Pocono, East Stroudsburg, perhaps even DWG. And OK Scranton is a larger city, but how many people per day will ride to Newark/Hoboken/NYC from there? I'll probably take a ride perhaps even dragging my wife along (when we stay in Scranton we stay at the Lackawanna Hotel just because I like trains). So that's 2 riders, but it's probably a one-time thing. We might take the train from Eastburg to Midtown to see a Broadway matinee but again, how often will that be?
But has there been a serious study done on potential ridership? There must be dozens of factors mitigating for and against rail ridership. Bus riders will probably be your target market, but the train will be more expensive, will take longer, and will be less flexible (there are over a dozen Martz buses alone from DWG to NYC each day).
I don't think people taking trains from either Hackettstown or Netcong are all borough residents. Lots of them come from surrounding area. Still they are only pulling in 82-85 people a day. And I know Scranton wouldn't be the only station on the line. The train would probably also stop at Tobyhanna, Mt Pocono, East Stroudsburg, perhaps even DWG. And OK Scranton is a larger city, but how many people per day will ride to Newark/Hoboken/NYC from there? I'll probably take a ride perhaps even dragging my wife along (when we stay in Scranton we stay at the Lackawanna Hotel just because I like trains). So that's 2 riders, but it's probably a one-time thing. We might take the train from Eastburg to Midtown to see a Broadway matinee but again, how often will that be?
But has there been a serious study done on potential ridership? There must be dozens of factors mitigating for and against rail ridership. Bus riders will probably be your target market, but the train will be more expensive, will take longer, and will be less flexible (there are over a dozen Martz buses alone from DWG to NYC each day).
In post #17 'quite life' gave a link to our current planning. That link contains links to other plans and studies. But the bottom line is: there are no current passenger rail plans for Northeastern PA. You can see that in the Draft 2020 State Rail Plan in figure 5.3 which is after the 210 page report. Many of those plans are for dates well into the future and we are not included.
But for anybody that thinks this might happen tomorrow I always tell them to use Google Earth and follow the tracks to Andover - if you can. I also would suggest a ride down to almost into Portland, PA on Route 611. Then to take the old Slateford Road and park close to the Viaduct railroad bridge. Stretch your legs and take a good look at that bridge that was made in 1929. The bridge is in terrible shape and we do not have the willpower or the money to demolish and replace it. It will have to be dealt with in the near future. it crosses over Route 80 in NJ. But we do not do projects that massive today, I don't think we have the raw materials we once had or the factories to process them.
The subject of rail to NYC comes up ever once in a while. It is almost like one of the old shady developers brings up the subject, that promised we would have it next year, just to sell more houses. What we really need are the same high paying jobs, that our transplants have in the City so they do not have to travel to the City, for the same money! That way only a fraction of the people would need to commute.
The bridge is in terrible shape and we do not have the willpower or the money to demolish and replace it. It will have to be dealt with in the near future. it crosses over Route 80 in NJ. But we do not do projects that massive today, I don't think we have the raw materials we once had or the factories to process them.
They would have to use heavy-lift skycrane helicopters to lift and move those pieces to waiting barges in the Delaware River. That would be best accomplished on weekends between the hours of 4pm - till sundown during the summer months when light is available the longest. It's one way of seeing that bridge being able to be dismantled.
Last edited by DavidWebb; 11-18-2020 at 06:54 PM..
Reason: corrections made
I don't think people taking trains from either Hackettstown or Netcong are all borough residents. Lots of them come from surrounding area. Still they are only pulling in 82-85 people a day. And I know Scranton wouldn't be the only station on the line. The train would probably also stop at Tobyhanna, Mt Pocono, East Stroudsburg, perhaps even DWG. And OK Scranton is a larger city, but how many people per day will ride to Newark/Hoboken/NYC from there? I'll probably take a ride perhaps even dragging my wife along (when we stay in Scranton we stay at the Lackawanna Hotel just because I like trains). So that's 2 riders, but it's probably a one-time thing. We might take the train from Eastburg to Midtown to see a Broadway matinee but again, how often will that be?
But has there been a serious study done on potential ridership? There must be dozens of factors mitigating for and against rail ridership. Bus riders will probably be your target market, but the train will be more expensive, will take longer, and will be less flexible (there are over a dozen Martz buses alone from DWG to NYC each day).
I think there are a few things to point out in this. One is that they're looking to get the ride time from Scranton to Hoboken to 3 hours 20 minutes and the ridership projections are based on that trip time, but I think it would probably be substantially better if they can get it under 3 hours. The other thing to note is that they're looking at this with *only* eastbound ridership which they estimate a daily ridership (with no weekend service) of 3,250 during peak AM peak hours and an additional 270 off-peak. I think what's a given is that for the most part, people who are daily commuters are going to need to ride back.
However, what this is missing, and to fisheye's point, is leveraging this to get riders going *into* Scanton for the day and back out. It's understandable that with the larger Tri-State Area job market, that ridership going westbound in the AM would be lower, but for Scranton and the area around it, those likely smaller westbound peak AM ridership numbers which the study does not estimate has a more outsized impact than the eastbound peak AM ridership of Pennsylvanians living in PA as bedroom communities. I think there's some importance in having businesses in Scranton and the area around it be able to attract skilled workforces for their businesses. It's also important in that a lot of households are at least dual income and this allows the flexibility of a dual-income household living somewhere within the major Newark/Jersey City/Hoboken/NYC job markets or the Scranton job market to live along the line and be able to easily switch over to a job in Scranton if there is a job opening that requires such skills. It essentially greatly opens up the labor market for Scranton businesses, though for funding purposes that are often very much based on just sheer number of passengers, it makes some sense why that's not what the paper focuses on.
I do think it's silly to not plan for *any* weekend ridership at all though. That rolling stock, track, depots, and right-of-way (the right-of-way already purchased) is the major cost not the operation, so having those sit idle during weekdays doesn't make much sense. It also behooves the Poconos and NEPA to try to attract some domestic tourism from the Tri-State Area.
Generally though, this seems to make sense to me in several ways. The initial ridership projections are alright and that's with what I believe is an overlooking of Scranton businesses being able to expand their labor market. The right-of-way is something that the respective governments already own and is usually the most arduous process and expensive cost for rail expansions. FRA reforms of recent years has also meant that substantially lighter and cheaper to maintain and operate (and ostensibly faster-accelerating and cheaper to purchase) rolling stock can now run on US passenger railroads. The president-elect is both an ardent rail supporter and a native of Scranton and PA is a swing state, and meanwhile, the US does need to get its economy back into gear from the fallout of the pandemic and spending towards infrastructure is generally a good way to do it as it has legs for later on.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-19-2020 at 02:31 PM..
Wow, thanks for that blast from the past! I see they project 140 Eastbound riders (bottom of page 5) out of the phantom Andover station by 2030. Yet today the brick and mortar Netcong station only serves 85. Where will these people clamoring for rail service in Andover come from? How many of those people are already among the 85 driving a few miles down to catch the train in Netcong, Mount Olive, or Hackettstown? They project 10 or 11 trains a day from Andover (top of page 5) but today there are only 9 out of Netcong. I'd like to see how their projections from 2009 for existing stations compare to actual ridership numbers. I bet they are wildly wrong.
The study was published in July 2009 as people were still reeling from the crash. But when were those rosy numbers compiled? If those numbers came any time before September 2008 then the whole lot of ridership projections have to be thrown out and redone.
Also in 2009 there were plans for Wyndham Corporation to go ahead with a development of hundreds of single family homes in Shawnee, up on Mosier's Knob. The plans had been on the books in one form or another since the 80's. That plan has never materialized but I'm sure the "plans" were factored into the railroad ridership projections for the year 2030. All over the Poconos are defunct golf courses and resorts that "could potentially" be developed into thousands of single family homes, and the Ward Cleavers who own those homes would theoretically take a 2-1/2 hour train ride into Manhattan to work as stock brokers and insurance actuaries. But, really?
They would have to use heavy-lift skycrane helicopters to lift and move those pieces to waiting barges in the Delaware River. That would be best accomplished on weekends between the hours of 4pm - till sundown during the summer months when light is available the longest. It's one way of seeing that bridge being able to be dismantled.
If you take a good look at that Viaduct I don't think you would say they would have to use heavy-lift helicopters. Russia has the heaviest and I don't think they would be any match for the weight of 'sections' of that bridge. I don't think they knew what a section was in 1929, that bridge looks heavy!
My guess is that it would have to be demolished and that maybe the concrete and rocks could be used as fill in the River for lane expansion of I-80? I do not think they would want to haul it too far.
To demolish or change that bridge I also presume that the Historical Society might have problems with any plans. Of course I also presume they would not have the funding to preserve it.
If you take a good look at that Viaduct I don't think you would say they would have to use heavy-lift helicopters. Russia has the heaviest and I don't think they would be any match for the weight of 'sections' of that bridge. I don't think they knew what a section was in 1929, that bridge looks heavy
A lot of that bridge has deteriorated to the point that they would not weigh as much as they would have when new. Get the Army Corp of Engineers to coordinate and it would get done.
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