Big Three Rail Cos Join in Bid to Make New Plans for Penn Station

The three railroads who use Penn Station kicked off a new effort to rally support for their plans to improve and expand the station by offering strong assurances that they are really and truly working together.

“It took a little while for us to get all on the same page,” said the leader of Amtrak’s capital programs at and into Penn Station, Petra Messick. “We really are marching together right now. And we think it’s a good partnership.”

Messick spoke with Straus News in a joint interview with executives of the commuter railroads that share Penn Station with Amtrak–New Jersey Transit and The MTA, which runs the Long Island Railroad and Metro North.

The interview followed the first meeting of a group convened by the railroads to hear and respond to their plans for the future of Penn Station. The group, dubbed the Station Working Advisory Group, or SWAG, is composed of major private sector organizations as well as representatives of elected officials and the three state governments, New York City and surrounding counties.

The advisory group’s work could last two years and will be co-chaired by Sarah Kaufman, Executive Director of the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Planning, and Tom Wright, President of the Regional Plan Association.

Messick said the railroads will describe to the group their assessment of and plans for the future of Penn Station and that the group will be asked to issue a report on their response at the end.

Sean Fitzpatrick, Deputy chief of staff at the MTA’s Construction and Development Department, said one purpose for the group is to unify discussions of renovating the station, which the MTA is overseeing, with what has often been a separate debate about how to increase the capacity of the station, which Amtrak and NJ Transit are in charge of.

“We think it’s a benefit to have a unified conversation even as there will be different milestones for each project,” Fitzpatrick said. “Folks will have different reactions and feedback on various projects.”

The future of Penn Station, the busiest and arguably the worst rail hub in North America, is one of the most complex development challenges in the city’s history.

Built for cash 110 years ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad, subsequent decisions have left a Rubik’s cube of problems. “The physical constraints in New York City are very real,” said Messick.

As intercity rail service declined and the Penn Railroad descended into bankruptcy, it sold off the property above street level, demolishing the much loved train hall so a new Madison Square Garden and an office tower could be built above the actual tracks and platforms crammed beneath.

At the time, motoring was in the ascendence. But now the priority is getting commuters out of their cars and onto commuter trains. New Jersey Transit says it wants to double service into Manhattan, something it will be able to do by next decade as Amtrak completes construction of two new rail tunnels under the Hudson (the existing two tunnels were built by the Pennsylvania Railroad at the same time itbuilt Penn Station and badly need renovating).

“There is,” said Jeremy Colangelo-Bryan of New Jersey transit, “a lot of demand that can’t be accommodated with the existing infrastructure.” But where to put the new trains to meet that demand is a pressing question.

The Railroads have said they need to expand the footprint of the station, possibly by demolishing the block south of the station, but several neighborhood and advocacy groups have argued that this is unnecessary if the railroads would just cooperate better on running trains through the station rather than turning them around in the station.

“Would that it were true,” sighed Colangelo-Bryan. “First of all, we do cooperate. Our service planning teams are constantly in cooperation. There are multiple venues and fora in which those folks work together to ensure that the operation is as efficient as possible.

“There is unfortunately that little bit of a misapprehension. There is, obviously, public disagreements at the political level on certain policy issues, sometimes. I think those things are misapplied to what happens at more of a technical level, where we do work together to ensure the station can operate–which Amtrak owns by the way, right?–to ensure it can operate as efficiently as possible.”

Colangelo-Bryan said he had reports going back to the 1990s showing that NJ Transit would need to expand capacity for trains running into Manhattan . “The idea that we need new physical station capacity, new platform and track capacity, is not in any stretch a new idea.”

Messick said the railroads would present to the working group at an upcoming meeting their analysis of station operations and to what extent capacity can be expanded within the present footprint.

“We feel very aligned on our commitments to these two projects and engaging these groups,” Messick said. “There’s a lot of talk about how we can’t work together. We are working together. We talk weekly, if not more, and we recognize that that’s vital to these projects’ success.”

The Railroads listed 54 organizations, agencies and elected officials who had been asked to participate in the Penn Station working group. These ranged from the neighborhood’s largest property owner, Vornado Realty, to construction unions and transit advocacy groups.

Nevertheless, there was criticism. “The Railroads are actively trying via their recently formed SWAG to suppress dissenting public opinion and voices about their plans to spend as much as $17 billion on an unnecessary southern expansion of Penn Station for a NJ Transit station,” said one of the opponents, Samuel Turvey of ReThinkNYC, who is not a member of the working group.

“The Railroads plans will provide each carrier with their own piece of Penn Station. Amtrak will have the Moynihan, the MTA Penn Station proper and NJ Transit a new station to the south which, however expensive and inefficient, may make the Railroads happy but no one else. This only happens, however, by the Railroads sacrificing any semblance of fiscal responsibility as well as the opportunity to transform the entire region with Penn Station as the centerpiece. The Railroads are not acting in the public interest.”