If they are going to do the Lackawanna cutoff and Amtrak uses it, it will be some combination of federal financing, NJ and PA DOT as well, there is no doubt. For example, who owns the old lackwanna cutoff line, that currently is a rail trail? If that was owned by the DLW, then technically I assume it was owned by Conrail when that line was absorbed in, so is that owned by the remnant of Conrail, or is it owned by CSX? If it was owned by conrail I assume that they could shift ownership to Amtrak, so they would own the rails (and folks, this is pure speculation and guess work). It is possible NJ transit already owns the trackage in NJ, they may have gotten that when they started looking at this.
Personally I think the contributing factor will be how much traffic post covid they anticipate commuting into NYC, right now that is really up in the air, dreams of totally virtual offices are as unlikely as NYC commuting pre Covid will return, what the balance will be, who knows? As a result I suspect this project won't even begin to happen until next year or 2023, so they can see if it is cost justified.
