Someone I know well is going for a job interview in Emmaus, Pa., just south of Allentown, and it got me thinking about how improbably stupid it is that there's no passenger train service between Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley. Even in its current state, our run-down national rail service does manage to connect most metro areas of significant size, especially in the Northeast.
How then did we manage to lose the rail connection with this region less than 60 miles to the north? It will surprise no one in this area to hear it has something to do with SEPTA. Passenger trains continued to run on the former Reading RR line, from Lansdale through Quakertown and up to Bethlehem and Allentown, through the 1970s. The route was never nationalized, unlike most intercity lines, and was operated by Conrail under contract to SEPTA. In the early eighties, SEPTA eliminated all routes serviced by diesel locomotives after state and federal subsidies were pulled.
Upper Montgomery-Bucks County is one of the fastest growing, most traffic clogged areas in Southeastern Pennsylvania—as anyone who has driven up 309 or on the Northeast Extension can attest. Efforts to restore passenger rail service above Lansdale have been in the news lately, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Allentown Morning Call (the Morning Call's report is better). A scaled-down plan to restore trains almost as far north as Sellersville could happen.
Restoring trains all the way to Bethlehem would be much tougher. A large rail right-of-way just below Bethlehem has been turned over to recreational use as the Saucon Valley Trail—though it's leased from SEPTA, which could one day reclaim it. Some rails-to-trails projects make sense, such as Lower Merion's Cynwyd Trail, where rail restoration would be mostly redundant. This one doesn't.
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