Trains in NEPA? (Scranton, Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre: middle-class, homes, good schools)

[Jillzilla]

Is there trains that run from Scranton area into Penn Station, NY? I checked out Amtrak, but all their stations in PA are so far from Scranton. I was trying to figure out a way to get to Long Island without having to drive every time..

[Magritte25]

No, unfortunately not. Sorry!

[Trucker7]

There are no trains from Scranton to NYC, but there's the Martz bus which has several daily trips from Scranton to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Wall Street in NY.
From Scranton, PA - Martz Trailways (http://www.martztrailways.com/from-scranton.asp - broken link)

[blip]

There's also greyhound service (2-3 direct buses per day), which is less frequent than Martz, but faster and cheaper for occasional trips. Check out greyhound.com

[SteelCityRising]

Unfortunately there is no light rail linking Scranton to NYC. This topic has been beaten to death like a dead horse on this forum, as the rail's opponents fear that there will be too much "trash" coming into Scranton from NYC (in more ways than one, but I digress). I'm personally still mixed on this issue. On the one hand giving fresh college graduates the opportunity to raise their families in Scranton and commute via rail into Northern New Jersey for work (because Lord knows Scranton will never become a major high-tech, white-collar mecca when so many in the city have a hostile "anti-college" mindset) would be a potential BOON to the region (I'd be one of those moving to Scranton and riding the rails to a new job in North Jersey). On the other hand the inevitable influx of people from The Stroudsburgs, North Jersey, and NYC not to Scranton but to upper-middle-class places around Scranton (i.e. North Pocono, Abington Heights) as they descend upon the region in search of good schools and big relatively inexpensive homes would only further the area's already evident struggles with urban sprawl as we see more trees coming down for new McMansions and big-box stores while Scranton proper continues to barely keep its head above water. It's mind-boggling that a city the size of Harrisburg can have great rail transit service to other cities, and yet Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, with nearly 600,000 people, is just kind of "there." Hell, the metropolitan area doesn't even have good bus service (hence why I predict I-81 is going to be a bumper-to-bumper free-for-all in not too many years if the population grows as it is projected to in the future).