New Chaos: MTA’s Lieber and Feds At Odds on Plan for Future of Penn Station

Even as it pours billions of dollars into rebuilding the northeast rail corridor, The Biden administration has rejected the MTA’s application for funds to plan the reconstruction of Penn Station.

At the same time, Janno Lieber, the head of the MTA, complained that the reconstruction of the station, the busiest and arguably the most unpleasant rail station in the United States, was being held “hostage” to the desire of Amtrak and New Jersey Transit to expand the station to accommodate more trains.

“We need to fix existing Penn now,” Lieber told a meeting of the Citizen’s Budget Commission, “Rather than holding it hostage to a future vision of expansion. We respect New Jersey and Amtrak’s desire to expand their service. But for us, it’s about making this facility more workable for New Yorkers who have been, I think, pretty generous in supporting these Amtrak and New Jersey Transit oriented mega projects.

By “mega projects,” Lieber was presumably referring to the multi-billion-dollar Gateway Project that by 2035 will double from two to four the number of rail tunnels under the Hudson River, opening the opportunity to increase both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit service into and through Penn Station. Just last month officials from the two states and the federal government held a groundbreaking in Hudson Yards for initial construction of Gateway. Senator Chuck Schumer announced expanded funding for the project from the Federal Railroad Administration.

“So now it ought to be our turn,” Lieber said at the Budget Commission event, “and Governor Hochul has made fixing existing Penn for New Yorkers her priority. And that’s the MTA’s priority.”

The Railroad Administration, a branch of the Transportation Department, said it does not comment on specific grant applications. But the MTA confirmed that their request for a planning grant had been denied.

“We are disappointed not to have received the grant,” said an MTA spokesperson, Aaron Donovan. “But the three railroads continue to work on preliminary design of Penn Station reconstruction.”

Those three railroads are Amtrak, which owns Penn Station, New Jersey Transit and the MTA, whose Long Island Railroad is the station’s largest single user. In a statement, Amtrak said it was “eager to advance the station’s transformation and has secured funds independent of federal discretionary grants to advance our preliminary design work with our partners at the MTA and NJ Transit.”

The railroads should “plan holistically for the reconstruction and capacity expansion of the station,” Amtrak said.

That language echoed a letter last month to the CEO of Amtrak, Stephen J Gardner, from Community Board Five. “We strongly recommend that both the Penn Reconstruction and Penn Expansion projects be undertaken and reviewed as a unified effort. A holistic approach.”

But Lieber at his appearance at the Budget Commission stressed the urgency of reconstructing the station. “It needs to proceed,” he said of Penn Reconstruction. “Because we have a station that was designed for 200,000 people and now is forced to accommodate 600,000 people a day. So it needs to be safe. It needs to be high functioning.”

Lieber noted that “there’s a lot of debate about through running versus expansion of the track and platform capacity into adjacent areas.” Lieber’s remarks seemed to be distancing the MTA from the argument the railroads have made that Penn Station will need to be expanded in the next decade, most likely by adding platforms and demolishing the block south of the station, often referred to by its tax lot number, block 780.There has been considerable community opposition and transit advocates have argued that the expansion could be avoided by changing the way the railroads operate, running commute rtrains through the station rather than terminating there. The letter from Community Board Five to Amtrak noted MTA studies which said through running would both save money for the commuter railroads and increase capacity at Penn Station by 45 percent.

“It is crucial to recognize that analyzing the Penn Reconstruction project in isolation may inadvertently hinder the through running alternative from being considered as a viable near-term option,” said the letter from CB five, signed by two committee chairs, Layla Law-Gisiko and E.J. Kalafarski. Amtrak has promised to look at this so called “through running” option as part of an environmental review that has yet to get under way. One unresolved issue, that could have considerable impact, is whether there will be two environmental reviews, one for reconstruction and one for expansion, or one combined review.

The MTA has stressed the two projects are separate, but Amtrak in using the word “holistic” appeared to be saying they are one. “A comprehensive review that encompasses both projects would be instrumental in evaluating the feasibility and effectiveness of through-running in the near term,” said the CB 5 letter to Amtrak.

Either way, the entire undertaking is immensely complicated. For one thing, Amtrak only owns the property from the street level down. The prime owner above street level is Madison Square Garden, which bought the property from the failing Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1960’s.The City Council recently extended for five years The Garden’s right to operate its 20,000 seat arena, saying that during that time it should reach agreement with the railroads on a plan for renovating the station below. The MTA’s planning for a reconstructed station has been further complicated by a private proposal from an Italian development company, ASTM, which has won considerable support from public officials and The Garden. The MTA has said ASTM will get a chance to compete later in the process. All of these uncertainties may have contributed to the Railroad Administrations decision to deny the planning grant. Readiness to proceed is one element of the decision making, according to the FRA.“FRA’s competitive grant programs see numerous requests for funding that we cannot all fulfill,” a spokesman said. “But not being selected in one round does not preclude a project from being selected in a future round. The MTA can apply for future rounds of our grant program after FRA issues the next Notice of Funding Opportunity.