BACK ON TRACK?
Hearing looks at whether Biden’s plan can return passenger rail
The release of President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal has proponents of increasing train travel hoping for an upgrade and expansion of rail service, including the long-sought-line between Reading and Philadelphia.
Those hopes were on full display Tuesday during a hearing by the House Democratic Policy Committee with the optimistic title: “Back on Track — Investing in Passenger Rail.”
Increased federal funding “would be major,” Jennie Granger, PennDOT’s deputy secretary for multi-modal transportation, told the committee.
Federal funding would help bring “the Amtrak and SEPTA systems into a state of good repair and could provide capital to start new service,” she said.
Up until now, “dollars have been scarce,” Granger said. “We’re Looking for strategic investment in passenger rail that benefits all Pennsylvanians.”
Route 422 is Full
State Rep. Joe Ciresi, D146th Dist., who chaired the hearing, has his eyes on the Pennsylvanians who live in the Schuylkill River Valley and spend too much of their lives sitting in traffic on Route 422.
Ciresi said highways cannot grow to accommodate the traffic that’s coming.
“Frankly, on Route 422 we don’t have the capacity, even
Up until now, “dollars have been scarce. We’re Looking for strategic investment in passenger rail that benefits all Pennsylvanians.”
— Jennie Granger, PennDOT deputy secretary for multi-modal transportation
just in Montgomery County, where we still have tens of thousands of acres to build houses on,” said Ciresi.
“Population is going to go somewhere and most will go out, not up,” said Jim Matthews, CEO of the national Rail Passengers Association. “You can’t just keep building roads.”
“The key is to move people, not vehicles,” he said of the nation’s transportation goals.
Ciresi has advocated often for some way to resume rail service to help reduce the legendary traffic congestion along the length of Route 422 between Reading and King of Prussia.
Most recently, he spearheaded a study, funded by the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation and undertaken by two Australian professors on the efficacy of a combination of “trackless trams” and commuter rail as a way to ease congestion on the perennially congested highway.
And that is far from the only possibility.
Several initiatives looking to return the passenger rail service along the Schuylkill that ended in 1981 have been raised over the years.
Nearly 20 years ago the Schuylkill Valley Metro effort aimed to establish a 62mile long commuter railway through 51 municipalities, with 34 stations including Oaks, Linfield, Phoenixville, Lower Pottsgrove, Pottstown, Douglassville and Exeter.
Trains were envisioned to run every 15 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes during offpeak hours with a weekday
Recent studies show rail connection between Phoenixville, Pottstown and Reading, could support 3,000 to 6,400 riders per day, said Jody Holton, assistant general manager of planning at SEPTA and former director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission.
“Population is going to go somewhere and most will go out, not up. You can’t just keep building roads.”
— Jim Matthews, CEO of the national Rail Passengers Association
ridership at 49,500. The cost of that over-ambitious proposal ballooned over the years to more than $2 billion and the project died an ugly death when a toll on route 422 was proposed as the only way to fund the effort.
But the dream did not die.
Renewed Interest
John P. Weidenhammer, chairman of Berks Alliance, conceded “there have been lots of studies but none seem to have gained traction.”
But Biden’s infrastructure plan, if passed by Congress, just may be the gamechanger, he said.
“What’s changed? The economics have changed. The technology has changed and the environment, need and approach have changed,” Weidenhammer said.
The Berks Alliance sponsored one of the more recent studies, undertaken by Transportation Economics & Management Systems Inc., looking at returning passenger rail between Reading and Philadelphia.
That study has estimated the cost of restoring passenger service along the Schuylkill, using existing tracks owned by the Norfolk-Southern freight line, with 10 trains per day, would cost $365 million in capital investment.
A similar study by PennDOT put the cost between $616 million and $818