The Lackawanna Coalition considers its geographic purview to include lines that were once part of the Lackawanna Railroad, even if they are located beyond NJ Transit’s reach. That includes the line to Scranton over the Cutoff, an engineering marvel that crossed the Pocono Mountains and began service in 1911. The last scheduled passenger trains ran between Hoboken and Scranton at the beginning of 1970. The tracks on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River were removed in the 1980s.
Since then, there have been various attempts to rebuild the track and restore service. NJ Transit conducted a study in 2008 and recommended peak-hour commuter trains, plus about 4 or 5 trains at other times on weekdays, as well as on weekends. Nothing came of that effort, and the agency is still attempting to build a few miles of new railroad to serve a small park-and-ride station near Andover, in Sussex County. More recently, in its 2021 Connects US plan, Amtrak suggested 3 daily round trips to and from Scranton. It was under that banner that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), as part of the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor ID Project, held an online session on February 19 to give interested persons an update (a slideshow from that session can be found at https://advancingparail.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Scranton-Rail-Public-Mtg-1_presentation_2026_02_19.pdf). There were also Pennsylvania-oriented studies in 2019 and 2023.
The trains would originate and terminate at Penn Station, New York. The FRA would be involved with project funding, and the next phase of the process will be a Service Development Plan (SDP); a nine-step process. PennDOT is the lead applicant, while the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Rail Authority (PNRRA) and NJ Transit are coapplicants. Current plans call for few stops west of Port Morris Junction: possibly Blairstown (the only stop in New Jersey), East Stroudsburg, Pocono Mountain, and Scranton. Trains would use either the Morris & Essex (M&E) or Montclair-Boonton line east of Dover; that decision has not been made, nor a final decision on station stops. The presentation also included a market analysis.
The next steps toward the SDP are Operations Analysis, Infrastructure Evaluation, Stations Planning, Ridership & Revenue Forecasting, Capital, Operating & Maintenance Cost Estimating, and Environmental Planning. One of the advantages of the project is that all of the right-of-way is owned by public agencies: NJ Transit owns the existing operating track, the PNRRA owns the route on the Pennsylvania side, and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) owns the abandoned section between Port Morris Yard and Slateford Junction, near the Delaware River. That part of the railroad includes the famous and scenic Lackawanna Cutoff. That 28-mile segment must be completely rebuilt and the track in Pennsylvania upgraded for passenger-train speeds before service can run.
That will not happen soon, because the next step after the SDP will be preliminary engineering and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review; Phase 3 of the Corridor ID Program for new projects. The Coalition has been informed that people in Scranton, the Poconos, and the affected parts of West Jersey want passenger trains to run again. There has been talk of that almost since the track in New Jersey was taken out more than 40 years ago, but hope appears to spring eternal. If passenger trains start running to the Poconos and Scranton again, it will mark the first time in more than 60 years.
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