Following article is from the The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) dated 8-9-08.
NYC rail link study on track
This time it’s a $250,000 regional effort aimed at exploring an Allentown hookup with NJ Transit.
By Matt Assad
of The Morning Call
August 9, 2008
For decades, rail enthusiasts pushing for passenger train service into the Lehigh Valley have been brushed aside as history buffs letting their dreams mask the reality that America's golden age of rail travel is passed.
But recently, with $4-a-gallon gasoline and highways crowded with thousands of people commuting as long as three hours to work, some of the Lehigh Valley's most influential leaders appear ready to make a down payment on those dreams.
Paul Marin of Allentown, a former Wall Street money manager who moved to the area after witnessing the 9/11 attacks, is cobbling together $250,000 for a study of what it would take to extend the existing NJ Transit commuter line through the heart of the Valley.
Local rail stations would allow Valley commuters to trade the harrowing trek on Interstate 78 and the volatile cost of fuel for a more pleasant ride to work, advocates argue.
Quietly, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. has set aside $100,000, and the Lehigh and Northampton county executives will recommend their boards split the rest of the cost.
Marin knows he'll be traveling a path littered with failed proposals, but what makes his effort different is that people are actually listening.
''Well, if it's a pipe dream, then I'm in good company with that dream,'' said Marin, who heads LVEDC's transportation committee and serves on the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority board. ''This is real. This is the future.''
People like Rodale marketing director Dennis Bednarski are hoping he's right.
Bednarski worked for Rodale in Emmaus for 10 years before moving to the publishing company's Manhattan offices in February. So now, most days, he leaves his Lower Macungie Township home at 4:30 a.m. for Wescosville to catch a bus that won't arrive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey until nearly 7 a.m. From there, he walks 11/2 miles to his office. He repeats the three-hour commute after work, arriving home at 8:30 p.m.
He's learned to live on less than six hours' sleep.
''It's a pretty long day, so I'm all for anything that could help shorten it,'' said Bednarski, 61. ''During the workweek, it's pretty much work, commute and sleep.''
Marin admits the time savings of rail service would be minimal until the system is electrified to allow for faster trains. But from the start, he argues, the commute would be more pleasant, more cost-efficient and more energy-conscious.
John Carrig, 59, of Palmer Township said his more-than-two-hour commute by bus from the William Penn Highway park-and-ride lot to Wall Street used to take 90 minutes.
But since he moved here five years ago to escape New Jersey property taxes, crowded highways have extended his commute. And it's become difficult to find a space in the overcrowded park-and-ride lot, where many people have to park on the grass and on the road's shoulder.
His 14-hour work-and-commute days have him wanting a better option. If there were a passenger train, ''I'd be on it the next day,'' he said.
Carrig and Bednarski are not alone. According to the U.S. Census, more than 20,000 residents leave the Valley to work in New Jersey or New York each day. Because that part of the Census hasn't been updated since 2000, the number is probably much higher.
The Valley's population has since grown by 50,000 people, many of them coming from New York and New Jersey in search of more house for their money. They built large, expensive homes on thousands of acres of former farmland, driving up home prices and bringing a 9 percent increase in population.
But no one really tracks how many of those people drive all the way to eastern New Jersey or into New York City. That's precisely why a study is needed, Marin said.
In the past, rail advocates were told the Valley had too much sprawl for a rail line to be convenient, or there'd be too few riders to justify the cost.
But with the so-called ''New Jersey invasion'' since 2000, and the arrival of a national energy crisis, Marin said the time is now. Amtrak's nationwide passenger service is up 14 percent over last year, and the railroad reports that some of its routes have become so overcrowded that there aren't enough trains to handle the surge.
Valley leaders hope to join a $1.2 million systemwide study under way by NJ Transit. It includes looking at a $551 million project that would allow commuters to travel 88 miles from Andover, N.J., to Scranton, and extend track from the High Bridge station to Phillipsburg, just across the Delaware River from Easton.
Valley leaders are most interested in the 20-mile extension from High Bridge, just north of I-78, to Phillipsburg. From there, bringing passenger rail into the Valley would involve extending the track across the river, probably along the existing Norfolk Southern freight rail lines, into Easton, through Hellertown and Bethlehem and straight into Allentown.
In theory, advocates say, the line could help residents traveling east get to their destination without clogging highways, and in far less time. Ultimately, the rail line would draw more young professionals into the cities where it runs, and as more wealth moves into the cities, businesses would follow.
''We believe in it enough to put our money where our mouth is,'' said Phil Mitman, executive director of LVEDC and former mayor of Easton. ''Many things have changed in the last 12 years. Rail could be the key to rebuilding our urban cores.''
Northampton County Executive John Stoffa and Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham agree it's worth studying. They say they'll ask their county council members and commissioners to chip in $75,000 each to begin the work.
But even Mitman admits that many of the barriers that have kept such proposals from being taken seriously are still there. Getting control of abandoned rail beds, or getting private freight carriers like Norfolk Southern to share their lines, is not a certainty and could take years.
Perhaps the biggest barrier is money. Early estimates for an effort to restore service from Lansdale to Quakertown start at $114 million.
But Marin says that's an argument for acting now. In his view, the energy crisis is causing a national shift in policy that will, in coming years, bring billions of federal dollars for passenger rail service and other options designed to reduce the nation's dependency on foreign oil.
In time, Marin said, a Valley line would become an important link for a passenger rail system connecting Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington with important Pennsylvania regions such as the Valley, Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
''We didn't have money for a $1 trillion war or to bail out Bear Sterns, but yet we did,'' Marin said. ''Where there is political will, there is money, and unless we are in the front of the line for that money, we'll be left behind.''
Michael Kaiser, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, who has been working on planning issues since 1964, said he welcomes a study but that the Planning Commission won't help pay for it. He questions whether passenger rail service is warranted, even if the money is there.
''We studied rail in the past and found that the Valley just doesn't have the density you need to sustain it,'' Kaiser said. ''I'm of the view that we should wait for NJ Transit to make its recommendation. If they decide to extend to Phillipsburg, then we should take a look.''
NJ Transit's recommendations could come by the end of the year. But by then, Marin believes, the train will have left the station.
Reporter Ben Slivnick contributed to this story.