In January 1984, I started my first paying job in journalism - at the Pocono Record in Stroudsburg.

Like all newspapers, the Record had a much larger staff then than it has now. In fact, we had a reporter whose main focus was transportation.

While he was supposed to cover all aspects of transportation, he was a train aficionado.

And in the mid-1980s, the buzz in the Poconos was that passenger rail service to New York City was in the works.

It seemed like our reporter filed a story once a week on how rail service was on the cusp of being reality to NYC.

The reporter left after a couple of years, meaning the amount of train stories dwindled, but the hope of rail service to NYC never totally died. In fact, it seemed like every few years there would be a push for it.

I became immune to those stories after a few decades, not only because I didn’t see it happening, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Too many times I’d read those stories and got excited. The thought of leaving East Stroudsburg, taking a train into the city, enjoying a great day in the Big Apple and then returning home to sleep in my own bed was too good to be true. In fact, it was too good to be true.

I, like my former colleague, am a big train fan. I love the trains in Europe, having done several train trips to several countries without getting in a car. And this past summer my significant other and I took trains through Alaska and it was nirvana for me - the scenery, playing card games in comfortable booths, drinking an adult beverage as we kept a lookout for moose. ... And not driving.

And while I would love to see rail service return and be successful in northeastern Pennsylvania, I don’t see it happening - at least the success part. OK, maybe I’ve been burned too many times by this promise, but hear me out.

According to an Amtrak study, each trip from Scranton to NYC will take about two hours and 50 minutes - that is way too long. I mean way too long.

It is about 130 miles from Scranton to Manhattan. Americans are not, and I mean not, going to take a train from Scranton to NYC if it takes almost three hours. I won’t.

The trip should take no more than 90 minutes, and to be honest, I’m being generous. It should take 75 minutes. If we want rail service to be successful in this country, we need to build rail lines that can accommodate trains going close to 200 mph. If we do that, a trip to NYC will take 75 minutes, including adding more stops along the line than are proposed now.

That would cost a lot of money, and I mean a lot. And that right there will be a problem because many Americans don’t want to spend money on projects that they won’t use.

Americans like to be able to dictate life on their terms, meaning convenience.

Think about it: Do you look for the nearest parking spot to the entrance door to the store you are going to?

Americans don’t want to sit on a train that takes just as long, or longer, to drive some place.

And then there is the whole issue of leaving Carbon and Schuylkill counties out of this equation. What a game changer for our residents if there was high-speed rail to cities where there were much higher paying jobs.

If we don’t build rail systems that cut car travel by half, it is doomed to fail, as much as I hate to write that.

If we can’t do it right, put the money toward public education, fighting drug addiction and, in Carbon County demolishing blighted properties.

tdeschriver@tnonline.com