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, D-146th 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 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 62-mile 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 off-peak hours with a weekday 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 game-changer, 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 million, he said, noting that the study also included infrastructure upgrades and repairs.
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.
West Chester has also begun to push for a return for passenger rail services, as has Perkasie in Bucks County, said Holton.
Increased Property Values
Another effort to restore commuter rail only as far as Phoenixville has also been under consideration for nearly two years and estimated capital costs at $130 million.
That study uses the projected increase in property values near a Phoenixville station as the economic engine to fund paying the costs of the new infrastructure needed.
That is the successful approach of the new “Bright Line” rail line built in southern Florida in 2018 linking Miami, West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale – and currently constructing an expansion to Orlando – said Brian Pitzer, CEO of the advocacy group All Aboard Erie.
The Bright Line is “is looked at in terms of the increase in real estate value, that’s part of the economic benefit,” said Pitzer.
Holton agreed, noting SEPTA data shows living within 1.5 miles of one of their regional rail stations adds 11 percent to a home’s value.
AMTRAK Steps Up
But perhaps the proposal now generating the most buzz is by a national player in the rail travel game – AMTRAK.
According to an outline released by The White House, Biden has proposed $85 billion for public transit and another $80 billion for AMTRAK upgrades, deferred maintenance and route expansions.
Some of that work is already underway, said Granger.
New stations along AMTRAK’s Keystone Service line between Philadelphia and Harrisburg are being built in places like Coatesville where a $1 million grant will also help to pay for a new 480-car parking garage.
The Coatesville facility will also feature bus transportation integration, covered waiting shelters, bike racks, lighting, wayfinding signs, and nearly 500 parking spaces to support SEPTA, Amtrak, and Link and Kraft Bus transportation services.
Another new AMTRAK station will come online soon in Middletown, she added.
“We’re improving infrastructure that has not been touched since World War II,” said Granger.
“Amtrak has a bold vision to bring energy-efficient, world-class intercity rail service to up to 160 new communities across the nation,” AMTRAK CEO Bill Flynn said in an announcement in the wake of the release of Biden’s proposal.
One of the 30 new routes AMTRAK has proposed in its 2035 Vision plan would run passenger rail between Reading and Philadelphia.
“These are seismic shifts in how we invest in passenger trains,” Matthews told the committee. The Biden infrastructure plan could improve AMTRAK rail system and “close the massive deficit between passenger rail and other transportation modes.”
Sharing the Tracks?
No proposal to restore passenger rail service along the Schuylkill can ignore the 62-mile-long elephant in the room – the tracks there are owned by Norfolk-Southern.
And, as anyone who was sat at a crossing while a mile-long train goes by knows, those tracks are busy with freight traffic.
Rudy Husband, a regional vice president for Norfolk Southern who has spent more than 30 years in the rail industry, focused mostly in Pennsylvania, was among those testifying Tuesday.
Husband told the committee that while the freight carrier recognizes the value of passenger rail, it has to prioritize its freight rail customers.
Like Weidenhammer, Husband agreed there have been plenty of studies to return passenger rail to the region, all of which necessarily have included a seat at the table for Norfolk-Southern.
But “studies have a limited lifespan because things change,” Husband testified, adding that is why getting funding quickly is vital. “Otherwise all this is just an academic exercise,” Husband said.
The national freight giant is “open to cooperating, providing the passenger sponsor accepts Norfolk-Southern’s evaluation of impacts on the freight system,” he said.
None of the studies proposed for the Schuylkill Valley “are developed to the point where we can evaluate them,” said Husband. “In the end, it comes down to money.”
He reminded the committee that similar to how passenger rail takes cars off the highway, freight rail does the same for trucks.
One multi-modal shipping container that fits on ships, as well as rail cars, carries the same amount of cargo as 200 trucks, he said.
But Norfolk-Southern also has a rarely recognized obligation toward passenger rail service, said Matthews.
“AMTRAK was created to bail out freight railroads’ passenger lines. A lot of people forget that,” he said noting that “today AMTRAK is providing pensions to people who never wore an AMTRAK uniform.”
And, Norfolk-Southern has shared track elsewhere.
Mark Spada, president of Western Pennsylvanians for Passenger Rail, told the committee that the freight carrier shares track with a new passenger line between Roanoke and Lynchburg, Virginia, and that “ridership has already exceeded expectations.”
Fix It First
One aspect of rail travel in Pennsylvania that cannot be ignored is the cost of maintenance and upkeep, and of replacing aging infrastructure.
According to the White House, “the Department of Transportation estimates a repair backlog of over $105 billion, representing more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 rail cars, 200 stations, and thousands of miles of track, signals, and power systems in need of replacement. This translates to service delays and disruptions that leave riders stranded and discourage transit use.”
This is particularly true in Southeast Pennsylvania, said Holton.
SEPTA’s rolling stock was “built when Nixon was president. If it’s not replaced by 2030, we will be forced to close 100 stations and four routes,” she said.
“SEPTA is at a crossroads. To help support the region’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and ensure the system is viable for future generations, we need to make significant investments now,” said SEPTA general manager and former Montgomery County commissioner Leslie Richards.
“This will enable SEPTA to meet pressing state of good repair needs and move forward on our projects of regional significance, such as King of Prussia Rail, the modernization of our trolley system and replacing one of the nation’s oldest rail fleets,” she said.
Further, SEPTA estimates it has a $4 billion backlog in maintenance and repairs, Holton said.
Part of the reason for this is that SEPTA gets by on half the capital investment enjoyed by similar systems in Boston and New York, she said.
“Funding is hard, not least because it usually crosses several jurisdictions,” Holton said. For example, she said, if Pennsylvania acts quickly it can “piggyback” on a major capital purchase of new rail cars planned by NJ Transit at a savings, but still with a price tag of $1 billion over several years.
“We need sustainable, bondable capital funding,” said Holton. “It’s important we commit to that investment.”
According to the White House, “this investment will double federal funding for public transit, spend down the repair backlog, and bring bus, rapid transit, and rail service to communities and neighborhoods across the country.”
‘Investment,’ Not ‘Cost
Too often, rail travel is “looked at as a cost issue, rather than an investment issue,” observed state Rep. Kevin Boyle, D-172nd Dist. “Philadelphia could be a keystone of the northeast economy with bullet trains to New York City and Washington, D.C. if we had high-speed bullet trains.”
Currently, growth in the U.S. is primarily benefitting big cities, “and small towns are being left behind,” said Boyle. High-speed rail would connect those towns to those cities and help revive their economies.
Matthews agreed, saying “it’s so hard to get people to look at these as investments. I hate to use the word ‘subsidy,’ because it suggests you don’t get pay-off.”
“But it’s not a question about whether trains make money. It’s a question of who trains make money for,” says Matthews.
“The pay-off is bigger for small towns than for big cities. We have to look at rail systems as the economic benefit they are,” said Matthews. “We don’t question if the National Weather Service makes money. These are the things we pay for so we can have a functioning society as a country.”
His organization is working to create a national intercity passenger rail trust fund to provide the kind of reliable funding Holton said is also necessary for regional rail.
“Unlike highways and transit, (intercity) rail lacks a multi-year funding stream to address deferred maintenance, enhance existing corridors, and build new lines in high-potential locations,” according to the information issued by The White House.
“There are currently projects just waiting to be funded that will give millions more Americans reliable and fast inter-city train service. President Biden is calling on Congress to invest $80 billion to address Amtrak’s repair backlog; modernize the high traffic Northeast Corridor; improve existing corridors and connect new city pairs,” The White House statement said.
Ciresi said state legislators and citizens should work with federal lawmakers “to make sure this bill gets over the finish line.”
