Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority board poses for a photo in front of Pottstown train station. (Left to right: Scott France, Executive Director Montgomery County Planning Commission; Brian O’Leary, Executive Director Chester County Planning Commission; Marian Moskowitz, Chair Chester County Commissioners and Deputy Chair SRPRA Board; Ken Lawrence, Chair Montgomery County Commissioners;
Christian Leinbach, Chair Berks Commissioners and Chair SRPRA Board; Eddie Moran, Mayor of Reading; Peter Urscheler, Mayor of Phoenixville; Stephanie Henrick, Mayor of Pottstown
I cover Latino communities in central Pennsylvania with a special focus on Reading and other cities where Spanish-speaking communities are growing rapidly. My stories explore the impact of language barriers, labor issues, the growth of Latino political power through grassroots efforts and many other things.
I’m a native Spanish speaker myself. I grew up in the San Juan area of Puerto Rico. The English I know now, I learned mostly thanks to watching a lot of TV growing up, mostly Nickelodeon shows. I also learned Russian in college, which I perfected during my time teaching English in southern Siberia through the Fulbright Program.
In my free time I like to hike, hang out with my two cats, Yanka and Ruben Blades, and watch every awful horror movie I can find.
Photo courtesy SRPRA
Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority board poses for a photo in front of Pottstown train station. (Left to right: Scott France, Executive Director Montgomery County Planning Commission; Brian O’Leary, Executive Director Chester County Planning Commission; Marian Moskowitz, Chair Chester County Commissioners and Deputy Chair SRPRA Board; Ken Lawrence, Chair Montgomery County Commissioners;
Christian Leinbach, Chair Berks Commissioners and Chair SRPRA Board; Eddie Moran, Mayor of Reading; Peter Urscheler, Mayor of Phoenixville; Stephanie Henrick, Mayor of Pottstown
A plan to restore passenger service between Reading and Philadelphia appears to be on the right track.
The Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority was accepted to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program – a national program that helps guide intercity passenger rail development.
“Receiving this grant is great news for the SRPRA, and importantly, for the residents and businesses along the proposed SRPRA corridor,” said Christian Leinbach, Chair of the Berks County Board of Commissioners, and chair of the authority.
“The number of applicants for this grant program far outweighed the funds available,” he said, “but ours is a compelling project, and truly matches the Corridor Identification and Development Program’s purpose to develop sustainable intercity passenger rail corridors across the country.”.
Authority leaders say the acceptance into this program will increase the likelihood the project will be implemented because it provides access to future federal funding opportunities. They say the Corridor ID program goes beyond a study, and encompasses the pre-construction development of the selected corridor. There would be an environmental review, planning, preliminary engineering, a ridership forecast and computer simulations of how passenger and freight lines would operate on the same track.
Thomas Frawley, executive director for the SRPRA, said that construction of the passenger line is still years away, because the process of negotiating a contract with Norfolk Southern –the company that owns the train tracks –will take a long time. Passenger service to Philadelphia would be operated by Amtrak and would make use of existing lines used by a commuter service that ended in 1983. The new line would include stops in Reading, Pottstown and Phoenixville.
The authority already has nearly a million dollars committed to the project by Berks, Montgomery and Chester counties, a $250,000 state grant awarded to Montgomery County and $750,000 in funds approved by Congress. The $750,000 will be used to hire a consultant to work on the service development plan. The authority expects to name that hire this month.
“In January,” Frawley said, “we’re going to be hitting the ground running.”
