Over the last 40 years, rail enthusiasts in northeastern Pennsylvania have been Charlie Brown-ed a number of times.

Let’s hope after a push by Pennsylvania-based federal lawmakers, Lucy doesn’t pull away the locomotive football again.

Amid the hoopla and back slapping over the last month since the announcement was made that passenger rail service would return from northeastern Pennsylvania to New York City, there is reason to think that Linus could throw a wet blanket on the project, but probably not until it’s completed and the trains are running, which is targeted for 2028.

Upgrading the rail lines and putting the trains on the tracks is the easy part. Throw money at it and it will happen.

Getting riders is the harder part. And that’s where this plan fails.

First the problem, but then we offer a solution.

In Amtrak’s study of bringing back rail service to Scranton - and the Poconos - is one key, and perhaps the most important, paragraph.

The report says the trip will take 2 hours and 50 minutes from Scranton to NYC.

There is no way in the world that a commuter is going to spend almost 6 hours a day on a train five days a week for a job in New York City. And that commute time will not attract people to move from the city/northern New Jersey to live in the Scranton area if it takes that long to get to their jobs - and their jobs, specifically the types of jobs, must be addressed too.

Without a majority of commuters, there will not be enough passengers taking the train to make it viable. Sure, some current residents of northeastern Pennsylvania will take the train once, or a few times, during the year to spend a day in the city. But it certainly won’t be enough to make rail service fiscally work.

It has to be commuters and they have to get to the city in about half the time Amtrak says it will take now in order for rail service to work.

There are several reasons why the trip will take almost three hours, a main one being that there are too many stops.

There will multiple stops in New Jersey, which Amtrak probably thinks is the only way to make this work. In other words, some folks get on the train in Scranton, more in the Poconos and then even more in Jersey. There already is train service - NJ Transit - which serves the needs of many who live along the proposed line. And while Amtrak has not announced the cost to ride, the NJ Transit trains will probably be cheaper.

And NJ Transit has a lot more runs than Amtrak is offering, which is three a day from the Scranton starting point.

One of the talking points that U.S. Sen. Robert Casey and U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright hyped was the ability for passengers to work on the train.

Many folks who live in the Poconos and work in the city or northern New Jersey are blue collar workers - electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. They might nap on the train, but they work with their hands. They will not be on their laptops mapping out economic strategy for a major bank.

But here is one idea that will help make the project successful.

Do not run three trains a day that make all those stops - five in New Jersey (Blairstown, Dover, Morristown, Montclair and Newark).

Run two trains in the morning and two at night that are express trains - two each from Scranton and East Stroudsburg. That should cut the time of the trip almost in half, especially if the trains do run at 110 mph, making it attractive to commuters.

Amtrak can still run a train that will take 2 hours and 50 minutes with stops in the New Jersey, but the key here is the express trains.

Without them, Linus will be the only passenger on the train, all wrapped up in his blanket.

Tom DeSchriver/tdeschriver@tnonline.com