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TrafficSNAFU t1_j8t1wyo wrote

My only gripe with these plans is that nothing ever comes of them or they duplicate existing plans or plan already sitting in development hell. Here are some transit projects/improvements in Northern New Jersey I would personally love to see. There are more things I would like to see of course, but I limited this list to the areas mentioned in this circular rail plan.

  1. Better weekend service on the MOBO, i.e improved frequency and extension of the Bay Street-Hoboken Shuttle.
  2. Improvements to Waterfront Connection to allow for more trains on NJ Transit's Newark Division to serve Hoboken Terminal. Hoboken Terminal is an underutilized asset. I would personally love to see all rush hour and weekend Raritan Valley Line trains terminate/originate at Hoboken Terminal when slots are not available at NY Penn. Construction of the Hunter Flyover would aide operational flexibility to better enable this.
  3. Finally constructing the long awaited Northern Branch extension of the HBLR.
  4. Extending the NLR to Paterson
  5. Union County Bus Rapid Transit.
  6. Bergen County BRT
  7. Passaic-Bergen LRT project.
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Nexis4Jersey t1_j8t3tu1 wrote

The Waterfront Connection and Hunter Flyover along with the Passaic River Bridge replacement are in the funding phase... With Amtrak seeking to operate service to Eastern PA on the RVL and M&E I think you'll see those funded soon. They should run full weekend Montclair-Boonton line service not just the shuttle. The Union County BRT should be dropped in favor of the resurrecting the sheveled Newark-Elizabeth-Cranford LRT which was absent from this proposal.

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TrafficSNAFU t1_j8t5zgd wrote

Big question, did any agency out in the Lehigh Valley apply for FRA funding for a passenger rail corridor? Compared to other hopeful corridors, I've heard next to nothing from that area. As for the other projects, I've seen them mentioned in the NJ Transit capital plan but without any firm funding commitments.

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Nexis4Jersey t1_j8t77cf wrote

Both plans are oddly different from the state plans from 2010s which go all the way back to the 90s. The Amtrak 2035 plan calls for 2x service per day from Allentown and Scranton to NY. Under the PA State Rail proposal which i'm told is still the recommended plan , service would start in Harrisburg head east servicing all the major towns like Lebanon , Hershey , Reading then Allentown then more or less express to Newark with one intermediate stop. NJT would provide hourly service from Allentown to Newark-Hoboken. The same has been proposed for the Lackawanna cutoff which under the NY State rail plans restores service to the Southern tier / Buffalo/ Syracuse with at least 3x service from NYC. NJT would run trains every 2hrs from Scranton to Hoboken. The Lackawanna recently received funding for construction to Andover with phase 2 receiving some funding on the PA side.

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TrafficSNAFU t1_j8t9uqg wrote

I know all of that but there's a still a fair bit of money needed to make these projects a reality. One of the most important ways to get funding is through the Federal Railroad Administration's Corridor Identification and Development program, which allows passenger rail corridor to get Federal money to establish service. In the case of the Scranton-NYC service, the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Rail Authority is both submitting an application to the FRA and is working on a ridership study in partnership with Amtrak. As far as I'm aware the same can not be said for the Lehigh Valley area.

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