Slow Train Coming?

Looking North

...and looking South

   I took these pictures a year ago at the Quakertown train station in Pennsylvania, which is near the northern end of a proposed passenger line.  As the pictures show, the tracks are in use and well maintained.  At this time, however, it has been 30 years since any passenger trains have picked up any commuters from the platform shown here.  The demand and ridership declined to the point that continuation of passenger service was no longer feasible, and trains were discontinued north of Lansdale, about 20 miles down the tracks.  Since then, this line has been used only for freight service.  However, when the passenger trains were stopped, change was just around the corner for the Quakertown area.  About 5 years after the discontinuation of the line, a building boom hit Central Bucks County.  In the late 80’s, construction was completed on I-78, which rerouted the highway south.  The new stretch of highway ran just above the county line, a few miles north of Quakertown.  That opened Upper Bucks and the Lehigh Valley up to an influx of professionals working in New York and New Jersey, who saw the area as an ideal bedroom community.  Many of the farms disappeared and were replaced by houses and shopping centers. There were now a lot more people in the area, and with them a lot more cars on the local roads.  For a while now, since at least the late 1990s, restoration of passenger train service has been proposed and discussed.

  All of this said, there are questions I have.  First, is there a need for the Quakertown train line to be restored, and for passenger trains to be once again running past the spot where I took these pictures?  I personally think anything that reduces the number of cars on the road is beneficial.  However, will enough people take the trains if they become available?  Would they still rather drive to Philadelphia?  I don’t think regular commuters to Philadelphia would prefer driving down the Northeast Extension of the turnpike, or route 309, and deal with rush hour traffic twice a day, all the way to and from Center City.  And for that matter, are there enough people there who commute to Philadelphia regularly to necessitate and facilitate the restoration of these trains?  Apparently there are, or the restoration of a train line to Philadelphia wouldn’t be proposed in the first place.

  As it stands now, the proposal has been revised for the line to stop in Sellersville, about 8 miles north of Lansdale.  That would leave the rest of the line for freight use only, and I guess pictures taken at Quakertown station in the future will still look similar to the pictures I posted here.  But there is still a desire among officials and planners to at least connect Quakertown to the train line by bus.  It seems that one way or another, somebody believes transit will work in Upper Bucks County.