Bringing back passenger rail to the Northeastern Pennsylvania region may become a reality for the over 1,000 people that signed the their names in support of bringing back rail travel.

“At this point, the rail authorities are getting ready to submit an application as soon as the federal funds are complete, so they can make the application window for the federal funds,” said Tyler Kusma, Executive Director of the Scranton Rail Restoration Coalition.

He said there is a new federal funding program called Quarter Identification and Development Programs that has quite a bit of money for programs just like this.

It includes rail projects and expanded rail projects to help towns, cities and states get new or expanded Amtrak service going.

“So what they have done is through the Federal Railroad Administration is, they have put out a criteria and will evaluate all the applications to the criteria and you know what most likely will happen is the ones that score higher, will get picked first,” Kusma said.

There are 14 points in the criteria and he said, “Looking at it myself along with Lawrence Malski, President of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority and some others, we think the Lackawanna cutoff or the Scranton Rail Project hits almost all their criteria, which means we will be in a very good position when it comes time to apply,” he said.

The application process is expected to open sometime in the third quarter of 2022.