Easton's Transit Future?

By Dennis Lieb
I attended the City Council working meeting on Tuesday night and listened to Planning Director Becky Bradley's evaluation of the recently released Lehigh Valley Rail Study. It was quite heartening to hear what she had to say since I had prepared public comments on my own reactions to the study and had not anticipated how closely the city's position and mine would mesh. I was going to link a short article on the meeting from the Express Times here but their pathetic website's navigation is so crappy it's impossible to find a two-day old local story...so instead I'll paraphrase what happened...

Last week's RenewLV hosted presentation in Bethlehem was so stilted towards buses by the consultant's report and so devoid of enthusiasm for rail, except by those experts from other parts of the country who have already seen it work in person, that it amounted to a waste of the public time. Ms. Bradley reiterated these points, presented our own demographics showing current ridership of 2000 to 3100 in contrast to the consultant's projected figures of 800 riders and brought a series of related development topics to the table that were virtually ignored by the report. The E-T story also mentioned the report's bias towards buses when we were paying them for a rail study and the comment by the consultant that we could save money on rail by bypassing Easton completely...good luck with that. The mayor basically said that we have tried being a team player by cooperating with the two counties, LVEDC and the other Lehigh Valley cities. The mayor was being respectful but I have no political qualms in saying say that we have few friends in PennDOT, the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission's Director or the private bus companies. If this is the way its going to be then we will do what's best for Easton first.

There seems to be a trend developing over the past few months that I attribute to a lack of seriousness about our future transportation options at all levels of Pennsylvania government. A link to an article in
The Transport Politic about Pennsylvania's recently released State Rail Plan can be read here or copy and paste this link:

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/04/28/pennsylvania-releases-state-rail-plan-promotes-increased-investment-in-intercity-systems/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thetransportpolitic+%28The+Transport+Politic%29

This plan is not, by the way, the regional plan worked out with Wallace, Roberts and Todd by Paul Marin before he moved to Spain.

After reading this, it becomes obvious that we will need to intensively localize our efforts - maybe down to the city level - if we are to get anything done with rail in the Lehigh Valley. Bringing a line to Easton first makes sense in many ways and once it's here, further expansion west becomes the obvious choice. There is a rail working group forming. I will be one of the members and we will be looking to incrementally increase it's size in the near future. Below are my exact comments to council from Tuesday night:

Brief Notes on Next Steps

I was somewhat disappointed in the Lehigh Valley study for both its stilted content and it's mood. As one example; their stated objectives in the report listed all the travel modes they wish to integrate yet somehow they managed to leave out the words passenger rail all together. So, how can we move forward from that document to something positive? The book Waiting on a Train by James McCommons, came out in late 2009...in 2008, McCommons rode all the commuter and long haul passenger routes of Amtrak and the other major regional networks across the nation. Everything we need to know and everyone we need to talk to about running successful passenger rail systems is in this book.

Its sad we even need to justify rail with "studies" at this point while countries like France, Spain, England and even China are already doing what should be obvious to Americans by now. And, everywhere it is being done in this country it has exceeded expectations for both ridership and economic return on investment.

These initiatives are working best in places where local/regional partnerships have sprung up with Amtrak and/or the regional freight carriers and these local/regional - and in some cases state entities - have spent their own money to invest in rail before federal funds were ever requested. Today there are new federal sources such as Tiger grants that go directly to the municipal entities for their projects and bypass state DOT's all together. In the case of PennDOT - an organization currently without a passenger rail department - that's not such a bad idea.

These are my five suggestions for our next steps:

1) Form a grass roots coalition with all the real stakeholders, including the public and the Raritan Valley Rail Coalition in NJ as well as local, state and federal elected officials who will support this effort. We need this alliance - perhaps with a catchy name - to drive the process forward.

2) Pick the current study apart with a fine tooth comb and find all the biases, inconsistencies and mis-statements of fact as they describe local conditions.

3) Evaluate our own best case scenario for rail, including details of route options, train set configurations, rider amenities, service frequency and ridership based on local data...even if this is just using Easton as a starting point for extension of service.

4) Seek out the national experts who know how to build these projects from the ground up, including those who have already done it in the Pacific Northwest, California, the Upper Midwest and North Carolina. All of them are named and interviewed in McCommons book. Meet with them in person if possible but at least via phone and email and pay them if necessary.

5) Get the key questions assembled and presented directly to those who can answer them, including Amtrak, Norfolk Southern, the Federal Railroad Administration, etc.


At the end of the Bush administration, a group was formed called the National Surface Transportation Policy and Funding Commission. Mary Peters, then the Sec. of Transportation, decided beforehand that passenger rail would not be part of the discussion. This is the same woman who said on national TV that bicycles were not a form of transportation.

Frank Busalacci was Wisconsin's Sec. of Transportation, a republican and commission member. He decided to ignore that bias by forming his own rail working group outside of the commission. He held public hearings, gathered data and came up with a fifty page document. The heavily republican weighted commission adopted his plan as part of their final report in spite of "no" votes by Peters and her allies. That report suggested an increase in the federal gas tax for transit funding and spending an initial $8 billion per year on rail. No coincidence then that last year's stimulus funding included $8 billion for high speed rail or that the money went to those regions mentioned earlier that have already planned and invested locally in there systems.

I am currently part of a small rail working group with Becky Bradley, Brian Gish and Chot Elliott and offer my services to the city to continue this process along the lines I've just outlined.

Thank you for your attention.

DRL