01-06-2025
Pennsylvania Group Proposes Alternative Rail Plan for State
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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Pennsylvania authorities are planning a new highway to connect the State College Area, but local activists have pitched an alternative: a railway system.
The Centre County Highway Project would construct an 8-mile, four-lane connector to improve access to the State College area. A campaign group opposing the highway is calling for the state to invest in a rail system instead.
Newsweek reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation via email for comment.
Why It Matters
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is exploring options for a new highway access road connecting U.S. 322 at Potters Mills and the Mount Nittany Expressway near Boalsburg. Planning took place throughout 2024, with open-house meetings about the project held in August.
What To Know
The Centre County Highway Revolt, a campaign group that wants to replace the highway plans with a railway system, told Newsweek that a train network would be more useful to residents and less environmentally damaging.
"The project is primarily hoping to end highway construction in Pennsylvania and divert road funding over to rail transit and active transportation," a spokesperson for the CCHR campaign said.
The group also stated that the cost of a rail project would be lower than that of a highway of the same length, although the proposal has not been fully costed.
"A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates phase 1 should be under $400 million, so about half the cost of the SCAC highway, but also we're not engineering experts, so take that with a grain of salt, CCHR said.
"Future phases will obviously be much more expensive, but that's just making up for lost time. There are currently 3 highways going into the State College area, but zero long-distance bicycle trails (like the nearby GAP or Ghost Town trails) and zero intercity rail options (like is seen at equivalent R1 University towns such as Davis, Champaign-Urbana, or Ann Arbor)."
A proposed map of a rail route in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
A proposed map of a rail route in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
CCHR
The current route proposed by the CCHR campaign would stretch from State College to Tyrone, connecting the Amtrak service there.
"PennDOT has offered people a choice of 'peanuts, peanuts, or peanuts' and concluded nobody wants pretzels," CCHR said. "We think that's bad engineering, and all future road and highway projects should be halted until multimodal options have been brought up to equivalent levels of investment."
"The economic benefits are myriad. The science shows conclusively that rail and trail projects generate a much higher return on investment for every dollar spent than equivalent road projects. Cars are insanely expensive, so transit users and bicyclists spend more at local businesses than drivers, and tubular transit connections have been shown to directly improve rural economies and eco-tourism."
What People Are Saying
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said that the highway would "meet the needs of interstate, regional, and local traffic passing through and moving within the study area by reducing congestion, improving safety, and addressing system continuity."
What Happens Next
The highway project continues to make progress, with more consultations about environmental impact scheduled in the future.
