Amtrak allentown, scranton, reading and new york
 

Can a moderator please put this in the Overhauling Amtrak thread? This doesnt need its own thread.

Michael Scott disagrees.

https://tenor.com/bfJGA.gif

I think these are good plans.

Rail is a good mode of transportation for medium length trips. NYC is a good destination for rail for the obvious reasons. Scranton, Allentown, and Reading are all small cities that will only ever support mediocre commercial air service because of size and proximity to a major city. But at the same time it's a bit of a drive and there is probably a lot of traffic congestion trying to get into the NYC metro area.

A train would let people living in Scranton or Allentown access air travel, entertainment, specialist doctors, etc, in NYC.

I could also see people whose jobs let them work from home buying a reasonably priced house somewhere like Allentown and then if their job requires in person attendance at a meeting or they need to be in-office for a while for training it would be doable to use the train for that.

I would rather see NJT extend to Allentown with Amtrak extending further to Harrisburg with at least 4x daily service. The same goes for the Lackawanna service which NJT should extend to East Stroudsburg with Hourly service and Amtrak continue onto to Scranton - Binghamton - Buffalo with at least 6x daily service.

PA has long been the holdup on the NYC-Scranton route. But now PA finally has state legislators that support funding the route. So this route should happen.

NYC-Allentown makes even more sense. Allentown is much closer, has much higher commuter counts, and is a more populous, economically healthier area.

I really hope both routes get fully funded shortly.

But if you're in Scranton, how else could you get a New York slice if there isn't a rail connection?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgEeDR98X8

I agree with you, however-- Allentown is larger, closer to New York and northern Jersey, and its economy seems to be doing pretty well.