DOWN THE LINE
Reading-to-Philly service 5 to 10 years away, planners say
It’s likely to be five to 10 years before passengers will be able ride a train between Reading and Philadelphia.
That was the assessment a Montgomery County official gave to the Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission on Wednesday night.
“It’s going to take a number of years to do this,” said Matthew Edmond, Montgomery County Planning Commission assistant director of transportation and long-range planning. “Five to 10 is realistic, which is true of any place in the nation when you’re restarting service that’s been gone for 40 years.
“It takes money and time to build the stuff you need to build. When you’ll first see a train going is, optimistically, five to 10 years.”
Edmond was joined by Scott France, county planning commission executive director, and Brian Styche, Chester County Planning Commission multimodal transportation planning director.
The three briefed municipal officials from Pottstown and Upper Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove, East Coventry, North Coventry, Douglass, New Hanover and West Pottsgrove townships on the proposed creation of the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority, which is being considered by county commissioners in Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties.
Public hearings to create the rail authority have been scheduled for April 27 in Berks and Chester counties and April 20 in Montgomery County.
Presuming all three counties ultimately approve the authority, it would be comprised of a nine-member board and executive director charged with dealing with all the agencies at the table to bring passenger rail back to the valley.
In addition to PennDOT, which will have a seat at the table, Norfolk-Southern, the freight rail operator now using the tracks between Reading and Philadelphia, and Amtrak all have a role to play and they would rather deal with a single entity on local issues like schedules, funding and station locations.
France said that although the return of passenger rail to the Schuylkill Valley has been discussed for decades,
"It takes money and time to build the stuff you need to build. When you’ll first see a train going is, optimistically, five to 10 years.”
— Matthew Edmond, Montgomery County Planning Commission assistant director of transportation and long-range planning.
a number of factors have combined to make this the best time to act — the most significant being the passage of the federal infrastructure bill that could provide enough funding to pay the $300 million capital cost up front.
Previous efforts to reestablish passenger rail have often stumbled over that cost.
“The number one thing to have is Amtrak on your team, and Amtrak doesn’t want to wait,” France said.
Amtrak is the most crucial player for three reasons, France said.
First, the national rail operator was allocated $66 billion under the $1.2 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed in November.
Second, even before the bill was signed, Amtrak had issued a 15-year plan to improve inter-city rail travel in the U.S., a plan that specifically identified a line between Reading and Philadelphia to reconnect the valley to the Northeast corridor by rail.
Third, and perhaps most important, Amtrak’s status as a national rail carrier gives it legal standing to obtain time and space on existing freight rail lines. France said that brings Norfolk-Southern to the table to negotiate to allow passenger rail lines to run on the existing freight lines.
Those talks could begin as soon as this year, although France said Norfolk-Southern may try to delay them because they are dealing with a number of locations around the country with a similar claim to track time.
As planning stands now, the Amtrak line would not connect with SEPTA and would be a one-seat ride from the local station to either 30th Street Station in Philadelphia or to Reading, France said. But there is a lot of planning still do do, including where stations would be located, he said.
He brought a map that showed stations at Reading, Birdsboro, Pottstown, Royersford, Phoenixville, Valley Forge and Norristown, but said there is no guarantee yet where stations would be located. However, he said, the effort considers Reading, Pottstown, Phoenixville and Norristown to be anchor stations.
One reason may be because those municipalities serve a lower-income population, and the federal infrastructure funding prioritizes equity for those who may not have a vehicle of their own, limiting their mobility and ability to get a job not near home.
France said 22% of Pottstown residents do not own a vehicle and 14% of Norristown’s population is also without a vehicle.
“The equity component is big,” he said.
On the economic front, a return of regional rail has some immediate and long-term benefits. Those include as much as $1 billion in property tax benefits over 20 years, due in part because property values in the vicinity of train stations increase by 8% to 15%, he said.
“Businesses may want to locate in downtown Pottstown,
or the industrial area, because Reading is now a market for them,” he said.
The next step in the process is a capacity study wherein Amtrak uses a complex formula to try to determine the potential ridership for passenger service.
Edmond said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey helped secure $750,000 in federal funding to pay for that study, which would take about a year. The criteria for that study is scheduled to be released May 14.
After the capacity study is completed, environmental impact statements and engineering work will take place before construction can even begin, France said.
Returning passenger rail “is not only the right thing to do, but a strategic opportunity to put us in the right position,” he said.