Public transportation
Public transit in Reading and its surrounding communities has been provided since 1973 by the Berks Area Regional Transportation Authority (BARTA). BARTA operates a fleet of 50 buses (all hybrid electric buses) serving 20 routes, mostly originating at the BARTA Transportation Center in Downtown Reading. BARTA also provides paratransit service in addition to fixed route service. The former Reading Railroad Franklin Street Station was refurbished and reopened to bus service on September 9, 2013, with buses running the express route back and forth to Lebanon Transit. The route to Lebanon was discontinued after a short period, resulting in the refurbished station sitting vacant.
Klein Transportation provides bus service to Reading from a stop in downtown Reading and a stop at the Boscov's at the former Fairgrounds Square Mall to Douglassville, Kutztown, Wescosville, Hellertown, and Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Transport Azumah provides bus service from the InterCity Bus Terminal to New York City. Amtrak Thruway bus service operated by Krapf Coaches ran from the BARTA Transportation Center in Reading to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, with an intermediate stop in Pottstown, until it was discontinued on March 18, 2025. The Uptown Vans network offers service to Newark, New Jersey, Union City, New Jersey, and New York City.
Reading and the surrounding area is serviced by the Reading Regional Airport, a general aviation airfield. The three-letter airport code for Reading is RDG. Scheduled commercial airline service to Reading ended in 2004, when the last airline, USAir stopped flying into Reading.
Freight rail service in Reading is provided by the Norfolk Southern Railway, the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad, and the East Penn Railroad. Norfolk Southern Railway serves Reading along the Harrisburg Line, which runs east to Philadelphia and west to Harrisburg, and the Reading Line, which runs northeast to Allentown. Norfolk Southern Railway operates the Reading Yard in Reading. The Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad operates the Reading Division line from an interchange with the Norfolk Southern Railway in Reading north to Port Clinton and Packerton. The East Penn Railroad operates the Lancaster Northern line from Sinking Spring southwest to Ephrata, using trackage rights along Norfolk Southern Railway east from Sinking Spring to an interchange with the Norfolk Southern Railway in Reading.
Passenger trains ran between Pottsville, Reading, Pottstown, and Philadelphia along the Pottsville Line until July 27, 1981, when transit operator SEPTA curtailed commuter service to electrified lines. Since then, there have been repeated calls for the resumption of the services.
In the late 1990s and up to 2003, SEPTA, in cooperation with Reading-based BARTA, funded a study called the Schuylkill Valley Metro which included plans to extend SEPTA's R6 passenger line to Pottstown, Reading, and Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. The project suffered a major setback when it was rejected by the Federal Transit Administration New Starts program, which cited doubts about the ridership projections and financing assumptions used by the study. With the recent surge in gasoline prices and ever-increasing traffic, the planning commissions of Montgomery County and Berks County have teamed to study the feasibility of a simple diesel shuttle train between the Manayunk/Norristown Line and Pottstown/Reading. In 2018, a panel led by the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance pushed for an extension of the Manayunk/Norristown Line to Reading along existing Norfolk Southern freight railroad tracks, with service terminating either at the Franklin Street Station in Reading or in Wyomissing. In 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation conducted a feasibility study on passenger train service from Reading to Philadelphia. In 2021, Amtrak announced a plan to implement intercity train service from Reading to Philadelphia and New York City, mostly following the Norfolk Southern line between Reading and Philadelphia and the Northeast Corridor between Philadelphia and New York City. In April 2022, the commissions of Berks, Chester, and Montgomery County voted to establish the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority to oversee the restoration of Philadelphia-Reading passenger rail service on the former Reading Railroad right-of-way.
