MTA Penn Access Project Delayed to 2030

by Sean Jeans-Gail, VP of Gov't Affairs

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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that delivery of the $2.9 billion Penn Access project, which will connect Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven line to Penn Station in Manhattan, will be delayed by three years, pushing full completion to 2030.

MTA is placing the blame for the delay squarely on Amtrak, which owns Hell Gate right-of-way, arguing the railroad has not provided adequate access for construction.

"I don't think this is in dispute: of the 48 outages committed to on paper in an agreement between Amtrak and the MTA, only seven were provided in the first two years," said Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s head of construction and development. "[Amtrak] can quibble and say actually it was seven and a half or eight, but, we did not get the outages in the first two years, and that set the project spiraling off in the wrong direction."

Amtrak Responds

In response to the MTA’s accusations on Monday, Amtrak issued a statement emphasizing that it has invested $140 million in the project. Amtrak did acknowledge that staffing shortages on its end led to delays in work. However, they also pointed to delays on MTA’s end, such as with the Eastbound Reroute project.

“We need to objectively determine what the causes of the delays were at different points in time and then negotiate what the right agreement is,” Amtrak President Roger Harris told reporters. “We are not unreasonable people.”

Amtrak also outlined mitigation steps it is taking, in conjunction with MTA, including:

• Providing more 55-hr outages as well as three long-term track outages;
• Changing Amtrak rules for worker protection to allow more work to be done for the MTA and its contractor;
• Modifying and lengthening schedules of (and in some cases temporarily suspending) Amtrak trains to allow for work to take place; and
• Taking over a portion of the work that was originally to have been performed by the MTA’s contractor.

Service Goals & Benefits

The Penn Access project will:

• Create a one-seat ride between Penn Station and the East Bronx, Westchester, and Connecticut;
  • Significant reduction in commutes between the Bronx to Manhattan, cutting travel time by up to 50 minutes;
  • Some Connecticut trips could be shortened by as much as 73 minutes;
• Build 19 miles of new and rehabilitated track along Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line, which will improve reliability and on-time service for Amtrak passengers; and
• Add four new ADA-accessible stations at Hunts Point, Morris Park, Co-op City, and Parkchester/Van Nest.

Next Steps

In the response to the delays, MTA is proposing launching a limited version of the service in 2027 for East Bronx residents.

“We need to go through the process of figuring out how much of that is feasible to be able to say whether a ‘27 partial delivery is possible,” stated Harris when asked by a reporter.

The MTA also hired a law firm to negotiate a revised agreement with Amtrak, and said they will be seeking additional funding for the project from Amtrak.

For more details of the work MTA is doing on Penn Access, read StreetsblogNYC’s Dave Colon’s excellent coverage of this week’s MTA Capital Committee meeting.