{"id":131056,"date":"2026-03-06T06:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T06:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/131056\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T06:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T06:59:08","slug":"new-yorks-hudson-tunnel-project-gives-hope-to-proposed-rail-connecting-reading-with-philadelphia-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/131056\/","title":{"rendered":"New York’s Hudson Tunnel project gives hope to proposed rail connecting Reading with Philadelphia | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2013 There\u2019s a promising update for the proposed passenger rail line project that aims to reconnect Reading to Philadelphia \u2014 and it comes by way of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

If you’ve been wondering what’s the latest with the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail project, there\u2019s some hopeful news.<\/p>\n

“From the beginning, Amtrak looked at this project as a Reading-to-New York \u2014 specifically Manhattan, Moynihan Station \u2014 but in order to do that, there currently isn’t enough capacity to go under the Hudson River,\u201d said Berks County Board of Commissioners Chair Christian Leinbach.<\/p>\n

Now, though, officials can start spreading the news because the New York Hudson Tunnel project<\/a> is back on track.<\/p>\n

“It had been in construction and had been suspended by the administration and was restarted about a week ago, so they are back at work,\u201d said Tom Frawley, executive director of the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A component of the ongoing plans for the Schuylkill River Rail once again connecting Reading to Philadelphia also included New York City.<\/p>\n

The Hudson Tunnel project that involves adding two brand new tracks.<\/p>\n

“The preliminary thinking is that it would provide superior economics for the service, so it would require less and hopefully very little operating subsidy,\u201d Frawley said.<\/p>\n

With the Hudson Tunnel project once again a \u201cgo,\u201d there are a few other things that need to happen so that the passenger train can happen, too.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re getting into ridership, working more closely with Amtrak, more importantly working with Norfolk Southern,\u201d Leinbach said.<\/p>\n

Union Pacific wants to buy Norfolk Southern, and Berks County now has legal representation for those talks.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you aren’t in a position to protect what’s important to us, and what\u2019s important to us is access to the Norfolk Southern tracks because literally 90% of the track that we need to get from here to Philadelphia is Norfolk Southern track,\u201d Leinbach said.<\/p>\n

Outside of the Union Pacific potential purchase and Hudson Tunnel project, it all adds up to Reading getting closer to passenger rail connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 There\u2019s a promising update for the proposed passenger rail line project that aims to reconnect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[36118,60880,60882,1184,34456,69,128,130,129,60881,43578],"class_list":["post-131056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-amtrak","tag-hudson-tunnel-project","tag-moynihan-station","tag-norfolk-southern","tag-passenger-rail","tag-philadelphia","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-schuylkill-river-passenger-rail","tag-union-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}