NJ Transit: Lackawanna Cutoff rail line won't carry freight

NEWARK, N.J. - A revived 7.3-mile stretch of the Lackawanna Cutoff in Sussex County would be for commuter trains only and would not be a freight line, officials said today during a public forum in Byram on the ...

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[John M]

Sure it won't! Not at first anyway. Then after a few years, it may be one Norfolk Southern local servicing an industry once a week. Then two, then maybe half of train daily. Before you know it, it will be a double-tracked mainline to PA with freights 24 hrs a day.
I remember being an Edison resident back in the early 80's, living next to the Conrail line in town, with about 11 trains a day. I remember Conrail said "train traffic is declining, we're ripping up the 2nd track and it will NEVER be put back in." Forward to 2008.... the 2nd track is BACK and brand new, and NOW...we have over 30 trains a day, sometimes 40. NOTE TO YOU RESIDENTS OF WESTERN NJ.....they are telling the "truth". NO FREIGHT TRAINS.... till later on... BEWARE!

[Nathanael Nerode]

Don't be ridiculous. There are not going to be signficant freight trains on the Cutoff in the next several decades because:

(1) It has no local industries, so there won't be local service.

(2) The only route for which the Cutoff provides a shortening of long-distance service is Scranton area-NY. With the coalfields run out, there's no significant freight demand for that either.

(3) Norfolk Southern would prefer to use its routes through Phillipsburg, which it owns, for pretty much all traffic, and except for traffic to southern NY and northeastern PA, they can do that with no trouble.

(4) Freight from/to southern NY to NJ will go preferentially via the Southern Tier Line (to Port Jervis), which has no passenger service until Port Jervis. Even that route isn't very busy!

(5) Freight from/to the north will go via CSX's River Line along the west side of the Hudson.

So, you might well get freight traffic temporarily in an emergency if one of the other lines was washed out, but unless Scranton revives as a massive industrial center, the freight lines simply have better places to run their trains. Freight's not as time-sensitive, so they'd rather have slower, uncrowded tracks than direct tracks where they have to get out of the way of passenger trains. You're never going to see regular garbage trains or coal trains or lumber trains running down those tracks.

If extremely-time-sensitive freight becomes really common, things might change; you might get freight trains running at the speed of passenger trains along the tracks.

Intermodal trains delivering stuff from the NJ ports to Scranton's stores -- maybe those will speed down the Cutoff, but that would get hundreds of big rigs off the road, and surely that would be an improvement. Incidentally, the Cutoff has NO GRADE CROSSINGS so you won't have to worry about being stuck at a road waiting for a freight train.

[josh]

No local industry? In 5 years this area will be a hub of industrial activity -- picked over for every last fossil fuel. We have a beautiful country house north of Scranton and the area is currently getting completely exploited (w water ruined) for natural gas. Those pipes and bits don't lay themselves. That's for starters. No, this relatively unexploited area area in being laid out to power up NYC for the next 200 yrs.