Add federal funding for passenger rail expansion as another item the Trump administration is reviewing and may try to take away, putting in jeopardy several major projects in Pennsylvania.
State Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll told the state House Appropriations Committee last week that the new administration has notified the state that it is reviewing grants for rail service expansion and corridor studies for future expansion that had been approved by the Biden administration. President Joe Biden had included $66 billion for rail expansion as part of the national infrastructure program approved by Congress.
In December 2023, the Federal Rail Administration approved $143.6 million for about $200 million worth of track improvements to allow a second daily Amtrak passenger train between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh among 10 projects worth $8.2 billion.
Although the grant could be canceled, the state had said before the federal money was announced that it would be able to pay for the improvements.
At the same time, the FRA authorized $34 million to study 69 corridors across the country, including Scranton to New York City and Reading to Philadelphia.
Carroll said he remains optimistic the grants will be maintained but the state is pausing any work on those projects until the review is completed. When it announced the review of federal grants for electric vehicle charging stations, the Trump administration said it expected the reviews to be finished sometime in the spring.
“It doesn’t mean [the grants] are lost,” Carroll said at the budget hearing. “We would be hesitant to use that money at this point.
“I’m going to believe that a discretionary grant issued under a previous administration will continue to be honored by the current administration. There’s nothing frivolous in these grants.”
Similar to the charging stations, the rail projects fall into a number of categories.
For the Pittsburgh-to-Harrisburg route, work already has started on the series of upgrades Amtrak is making to stations in Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Portage, Altoona and Harrisburg.
Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks and agreed to give Amtrak more space, has started making improvements that include side tracks and new signals in most of the locations with the federal money. Norfolk Southern will take ownership and responsibility when the work is done.
The Scranton-to-New York City proposal also is on better footing because the track already is available and it is one of five projects that the Federal Railroad Administration has included on its service delivery plan. That should lead to a favorable review by the new administration, Carroll said.
The proposal calls for using dormant tracks that are already publicly owned where trains wouldn’t have to share space with freight carriers. It would have stops at Stroudsburg and Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania and Blairstown, Dover, Montclair, Morristown and Newark in New Jersey on its way to Penn Station in New York City.
Less certain is the proposal to reestablish passenger service between Reading and Philadelphia, which ended in 1983. That project is not on the service delivery plan and still needs approval for space from track owner Norfolk Southern, so it could still be eliminated by the new administration.
Carroll said it would be “foolish to guess” whether that project would be allowed to proceed.
If it does, the proposal calls for four to eight daily trips with stops at Pottstown, Phoenixville and potentially Norristown. It also would allow easy transfers in Philadelphia to New York City or Washington, D.C.
In a related matter, Carroll told the committee that the $500 million grant the state received to help pay for the $1.2 billion replacement of the Interstate 83 bridge in Dauphin County also is under review. The bridge is considered a vital artery to moving freight from the port at Baltimore, New York and New Jersey, but replacing it is so expensive that it had been on the list of bridges where the state wanted to charge tolls until a court struck down that idea.
PennDOT is developing plans to begin construction in 2026 to build the new bridge beside the old one and adjust the highway to meet the new structure.
“I will continue to believe the federal government will continue to honor that commitment until we hear differently,” Carrol said of the largest transportation grant in the state’s history.
“If it doesn’t … we will have to build a bridge. The state will do it if it has to.”
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.