Northampton County Budget Does Not Include Money to Talk About Trains; Is This the End of the Committee to Talk About Trains?

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Northampton County is not going to spend $225,000 to talk about trains.

County Executive Lamont G. McClure presented a no-tax-increase budget for 2025 today without an allocation to the Lehigh Valley’s Committee to Talk About Trains (not its real name, but what it is).

Lehigh County had offered that amount to talk about trains, but Northampton County will not match it. Will that be the end of the latest Committee to Talk About Trains?

McClure’s decision could be the death blow to this Committee to Talk About Trains, which, somewhat like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” was dead from the beginning but didn’t know it.

McClure said he is a big fan of seeking passenger-rail service to New York City, but based on his $499.5 million 2025 spending plan, he does not support the current initiative, which could cost $1 billion and require millions in annual subsidies.

Earlier this year, an analysis was presented that suggested service to New York would take 2.5 hours on a train, which would add about two hours to a daily round-trip commute.

Three weeks ago, I left my house at 11:45 a.m. on a Wednesday, and was in Penn Station at 1:35 p.m., or less than two hours. Sometimes on weekends, I make it faster than that. I drive into New Jersey and take a train that doesn’t make stops.

Any Lehigh Valley train would make a lot of stops, but nobody at the big train talkfest bothered to talk to any New York City commuters. They just indulged in magical thinking, not the reality of long-distance commuting that starts before dawn and sometimes ends after dark.

They could have asked me. I tried to bring some reality to that event, but reality doesn’t suit everybody. Magical thinking is much more fun!

Trains to Philadelphia and for some reason Reading were also discussed. A train to Reading, darned near as useful as a hovercraft across the Monocacy Creek.