Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority officially up and running

The Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority is off and rolling.

The authority, a joint effort by Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties formed to establish the groundwork for a proposed plan to restore passenger rail service between Reading and Philadelphia, held its inaugural meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The group’s first session featured a full agenda, filled with mostly housekeeping items any new authority needs to take care of in its early days. The authority picked its first slate of officers, reviewed its proposed budget, set a schedule for future meetings, talked about creating a website, discussed the selection of an executive director and handled a number of other tasks.

Members expressed excitement that the authority is finally up and running.

“We recognize that there is more we don’t know today than we do know, but this step is critical in order to bring passenger rail service back to Reading, to Pottstown, to Phoenixville,” Berks County Commissioner Christian Leinbach said.

“This is farther than we have ever been before in the process,” he added.

Taking care of business

One of the first moves the authority made Wednesday was to pick its leadership team.

Leinbach was selected to serve as the authority board’s first chairman, and Chester County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz was tapped to serve as vice chairman.

Montgomery County Commissioner Kenneth Lawrence Jr. was selected to serve as treasurer and Scott France, director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, will serve as secretary.

The authority will meet on the fourth Monday of each month, except in situations when it interferes with holidays. The meetings will be held virtually unless otherwise noted.

The authority board also established a personnel subcommittee that will take the lead on finding possible candidates to fill the role of executive director for the authority.

Leinbach said members of the authority are also hopeful that they can find a consultant who will help provide guidance about the day-to-day operations while providing insight into what qualities are needed in an executive director.

He also said the authority is hoping to find a consultant who has expertise specifically in transportation planning and can help the board as it prepares proposals and studies for grant funding.

Those consultants may be the same or may be two different entities.

The authority is supported financially by equal funding from all three counties. Each initially provided a $100,000 investment.

Much more money, however, would be needed to complete the actual project. Some help may be on the way in that regard, most notably through a federal infrastructure bill enacted last fall that includes two aspects that will be crucial for the project.

The first is a substantial investment by Amtrak, which unveiled a plan last year to add a passenger route from Reading to Philadelphia. Amtrak officials said at that time that they foresee having three daily round trips with stops in Reading, Pottstown, Phoenixville, King of Prussia, Norristown and Philadelphia

The second is the allocation of money that targets passenger rail service to regions that are underserved — specifically looking at communities that have large minority populations, high percentages of low-income households and a large population without vehicles.

France told the board that he has reviewed the guidelines issued from the Federal Railroad Administration about a grant program that will distribute those federal dollars to build new corridors. He said the Reading to Philadelphia corridor is a strong candidate for securing some of that funding.

He said there are 14 criteria that a proposal must meet in order to increase its chances. While a perfect score using that criteria would be ideal, he stressed that the project may not check all the boxes but will likely check most.

Leinbach added that the project has already won the support of elected leaders from the municipal, state and federal officials who represent the communities that would be directly impacted by the new line. They also have significant endorsements from community and business leaders, as well as from Gov. Tom Wolf.

France said the Federal Railroad Administration will most likely start accepting applications later this year, with the first round of recipients being announced sometime in spring 2023.

He said there will likely be many communities interested in this opportunity, so the competition will be stiff. But, he said, there will be more rounds of funding in the years to come.

“We may be competing against other proposals for timing, but there will be other chances for funding,” he said.

Background

Proponents of restoring passenger rail service from Reading to Philadelphia — with stops in Montgomery and Chester counties — say the authority is a key piece to making the proposal a reality.

The authority will provide legitimacy in competitive efforts for infrastructure funding, have the power to receive federal funding, spend money to develop plans and work directly with organizations such as Amtrak, PennDOT, the Federal Railroad Administration and other necessary partners.

The commissioners in Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties each approved the creation of the authority following public hearings in April. It is made up of three appointees from each county.

The following are members of the authority:

• Christian Leinbach, Berks County commissioner

• Marian Moskowitz, Chester County commissioner

• Kenneth Lawrence Jr., Montgomery County commissioner

• Jim Gerlach, president of the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance

• Eddie Moran, Reading mayor

• Brian O’Leary, director of the Chester County Planning Commission

• Peter Urscheler, Phoenixville mayor

• Scott France, director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission

• David Zellers, director of the Montgomery County Commerce DepartmentThe push to restore passenger rail service, which has been discussed for decades, gained steam in recent years.

Leinbach has credited the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance and Berks Alliance for conducting a study a few years ago that led to the idea that restoring rail service could be possible. He said the study was unique in that it didn’t just focus on Reading, instead looking at the broader impact of how it would impact many communities along the line.

The study showed that restoring rail service would boost real estate values along the route by about $1 billion, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate taxes in the coming years and about $760 million worth of income growth.