lammius, on Apr 22 2006, 10:42 PM, said:
The NY Times did a series a few months ago on exurban frontiers and featured NEPA as one of them. It's unbelievable what people are willing to sacrifice to get a piece of green in front of their homes. The story mentioned that PTAs and little league sports are suffering b/c there are no parents able to participate, since they commute and are away from the community up to 17 hours each day!
Hopefully the Lackawanna Cut-off rail project will get underway soon. I can't remember if it's in the draft or final EIS stage right now...
I know of people right here in Pittston, PA, about 120 minutes from Manhattan, who actually commute daily to NYC! In the Poconos, much of the recent crime increase has been attributed to a lack of parental supervision---When you leave your cul-de-sac enclave at 5:30 AM to make it into work on time, and then you don't arrive home until 7:15 PM, what do you think your children are up to in the hours between the end of the schoolday, perhaps at 2:45 PM, and the end of your commute home? Many teenagers in the Poconos are left to their own device for 5-7 hours each afternoon and evening, which is never a good thing! I know of some who are even expected to have dinner on the table for their parents when they arrive home from Manhattan! When the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, the next on the chopping block, also sees more people making the daily trek to Manhttan via the Lackawanna Rail Connector between Scranton and Hoboken, I cringe to think of how it will destroy the fabric of families here as well. Sure, we may have better schools, (marginally) cleaner air, much less crime, cheaper housing, and plenty of room to "sprawl out", but what good is it if you can only really enjoy it on the weekends because you work from sunrise to sunset during the week? Due to a scarcity of career opportunities locally in my chosen profession, I'll likely also have to commute to NYC after college for work to command a salary that is appropriate for my level of education, which just doesn't exist around here. I likewise cringe to think of how my family will suffer when their father is "bringing home the bacon" 100+ miles away everyday. People are willing to bend over backwards, as you said, for a "little piece of greenery", which continually gets pushed further and further into a new westward frontier. I'm wondering if BoWash will ever just "run out of gas" at some point here in NEPA, or if people will soon commute to NYC via a commuter rail service that would link places as far away as Williamsport or Elmira, NY to the metro?! I know that sounds unrealistic, but people also thought "nobody" would be willing to drive between Stroudsburg and Manhattan everyday, but MANY thousands of Monroe County residents do make that trek, which is why so many local children unfortunately lost their parents on 9/11. Suburbia comes at a price, and how far are you willing to sell out your family in order to "feel successful?" I'm sure you could have just as good of a quality-of-life living in a trendy neighborhood of Hoboken or Newark as you would living hours away in Stroudsburg.
