Planned Amtrak passenger rail would connect Allentown to New York City
Is passenger rail returning to the Lehigh Valley?
The question has come up many times since passenger service to the area ended in 1979, but this time there’s a bit more to it.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden detailed a massive infrastructure plan that would require $2.3 trillion in spending over eight years, creating millions of jobs. The plan includes $85 billion for public transit to expand service across the country, and another $80 billion to modernize Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line. Hours later, Amtrak released its “2035 Vision” to grow rail service across America with new and enhanced routes, including a link between Allentown and New York City.
“The Northeast Corridor (NEC), a critical transportation link for the Northeast’s major metropolitan economies, has dozens of bridges, stations and tunnels that are beyond their design life and in need of immediate replacement or
rehabilitation,” Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn said in a statement.
“If Congress provides the funding proposed in the President’s plan, Amtrak would be able to bring the NEC to a state of good repair and improve trip times, and would also expand Amtrak to underserved communities across the nation,” he said. “This would create jobs, improve the quality of life, reduce carbon emissions and generate economic growth.”
But can Flynn’s vision — specifically, expanded service into places like Allentown — become a reality?
Some area leaders hope so, though all acknowledged the prospect of a train line is hardly a given and likely years from fruition if it does happen.
“I have never given up hope of reestablishing passenger rail service from Allentown to New York City,” Allentown Mayor Ray O’Connell said in a statement.
“Significant hurdles that have developed over the last 60 years stand in the way,” O’Connell said. “President Biden’s infrastructure plan’s investment in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line could eliminate a lot of those hurdles. I look forward to the passing of the legislation and seeing what it can do to bring about the resumption of passenger rail service in the area.”
State Rep. Peter Schweyer, D-Allentown, said the idea to run a rail line to the Valley is significant, even if the project itself never comes to fruition.
“For years the Lehigh Valley was never on the radar screen of Amtrak for this level of investment,” he said. “Regardless of whether that section of rail is actually built, for the first time in a long time Allentown is getting serious consideration as a growing area. And as we’re seeing migration away from big cities due to [the pandemic], places like Allentown and markets like the Lehigh Valley are going to be ... increasingly important.”
In a statement, Gov. Tom Wolf ’s office said the administration “strongly supports passenger rail and welcomes the potential for additional federal and Amtrak investment.” The state would continue to invest
in station improvements, ADA compliance and expansion of existing services.
“Any new services would require not only capital investment, but also ongoing operating funding from the commonwealth,” the statement said.
George Lewis, vice president of marketing, communications and research for the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., said his agency would have to take a “deep dive” into the ramifications of rail service.
“We’d want to better understand what it would mean for our job market,” he said. “The implication is that we’d become sort of the last rail stop on a commuter line. What does that do to the labor market in the Lehigh Valley? Do we start blending in and becoming a sort of exurb of New York City? What does that do to the uniqueness of the market we’ve established here?”
Lewis said the Valley’s economy has evolved dramatically since the end of the monolithic era of Bethlehem Steel, attracting warehousing, medical equipment manufacturing, biotechnology and other fields.
“We’ve done a lot to strengthen and diversify,” he said. “What happens when you build a connection that sort of tethers you to the New York City market?”
The last passenger trains to run through Allentown were in 1979, and they ran to Philadelphia.
The end of passenger service to New York City was 60 years ago — back on Feb. 4, 1961. That’s when the Lehigh Valley Railroad train, called the Maple Leaf, plowed through a blizzard that dumped 17 inches of snow to pull into the Allentown station one last time.
“You could barely see it through the snow as it approached,” said Frank Whelan, an Allentown historian and former Morning Call reporter. “It arrived two hours late and that was the end of that.”
An Amtrak executive raised hopes in 2015 of running a one-time Amtrak inspection train along the tracks in the Lehigh Valley to generate “momentum” for efforts to restart the line.
Public support for the initiative was high, and the Amtrak executive touted the round-trip excursion as a chance to show policymakers and local residents what passenger rail would look like for the area.
At the time, then-Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, along with Bethlehem Mayor Robert Donchez and Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr., were leading the charge to help bring passenger rail back to the region.
But Amtrak doesn’t own the rail lines in the area; most are freight lines that belong to Norfolk Southern Corp., which said it would not share its tracks with passenger trains.
“If you’re talking about [reopening the line] from Allentown to New York, then the answer is no,” a Norfolk Southern spokesperson told The Morning Call in 2016. “It’s a single line and it’s one of our busiest. It brings us a lot of revenue. We just can’t muck it up with passenger trains.”
That line, known as the Lehigh Line, runs consumer goods from the Ports of New York and New Jersey into and through the Lehigh Valley.
Dozens of trains a day run on a strict schedule too tight to be interrupted by passenger traffic, Norfolk Southern said.
Asked to comment on the Amtrak proposal, Norfolk Southern’s media relations manager, Jeff DeGraff, offered a terse statement:
“Norfolk Southern does not intend to participate in this conversation at this time.”
Building new lines to improve the Lehigh Line or fill in the gaps would be a multibillion-dollar project no federal transportation budgets aimed to support, until now.
On Wednesday, Biden pressed the urgency of the situation and said the U.S. is falling behind other nations making dramatic investments in infrastructure. He said the country will need to do more to support the middle class and invest in the substructure that allows companies and commerce to thrive.
“The good news is there’s definitive commitment to improving infrastructure,” Tony Iannelli, executive director of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, told The Morning Call. “The bad news is we seem to have unending spending and its impact on the economy. We do need to do something.”
In a fact sheet laying out its 2035 Vision, Amtrak said it has “the right to access all existing rail infrastructure” and “the national capabilities and expertise in place to operate these new routes — today.”
“Congress created Amtrak for this very purpose — to connect America by rail on behalf of the federal government,” the fact sheet says, noting Amtrak is the only entity that offers a comprehensive national rail network that connects people across states.
“Millions of people, including large populations of people of color, do not have access to a reliable, fast, sustainable, and affordable passenger rail option. This is neither fair nor equitable,” Amtrak said.