Feds Step Into the Penn Station Train Wreck

April 28, 2025 | johnmudd

RethinkNYC, Sam Turvey, April 28, 2025

While many fear chaos or worse as a result of recently announced federal takeover at Penn Station, we at ReThinkNYC are guardedly optimistic that we may now be on a path to constructively ending the stalemate on the New York side of the Gateway Tunnels. As construction of the tunnels is proceeding apace, it hardly comes as a surprise that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is choosing to act rather than passively observe the ongoing, slow-motion train wreck that has been playing out at Penn Station for far too long.

In what sense a train wreck? Let us count the ways:

1. Amtrak, the MTA and NJ Transit (the Railroads) claim that we need to double Penn Station’s capacity to handle NJT trains (from the current 24 trains at rush hour to 48) and we should demolish a swathe of Midtown West to build new, stub-end “terminal tracks” below W. 31st Street to achieve this result. But, after many years and many millions of dollars, the Railroads still haven’t found a way to accomplish 48 trains at rush hour using “terminal” tracks.

“Terminal tracks” are called terminal because they come to a dead-end (i.e., they connect to nothing) as opposed to “through-running” tracks, which would allow NJT trains, for example, to run through to Long Island, and LIRR trains to run through to New Jersey, just as Amtrak trains run from Boston to Richmond and points south through Penn Station with no need to change trains in New York. As per the FRA’s guidelines, reliance on “terminal” track configurations is inefficient, antiquated and not cost-effective. Nevertheless, the Railroads have not been able to bring themselves, despite repeated attempts and the expenditure of millions of dollars in consulting fees, to give through-running a fair shake. The authors of a nearly 200-page report – by WSP and FX Collaborative on behalf of the Railroads – managed to devote just one generic paragraph to the benefits of through-running, even though it is embraced by many of the world’s leading cities as the gold standard in commuter rail operations. The riding public in such diverse cities as London, Paris, Tokyo and Philadelphia are the beneficiaries of this transformative win-win transit solution. These municipalities have never spent their infrastructure dollars more wisely.

2. Although the Railroads are unable to say how reliance on terminal track will yield the desired 48 trains at peak rush hour, that hasn’t stopped them from insisting that ReThinkNYC’s plan based on through-running is not up to snuff. At various times to different audiences, they have presented varying trains-per-peak-rush-hour numbers that ReThinkNYC’ plan will yield, with nary an explanation as to how they arrived at these numbers – all this in an apparent attempt to discredit both through-running and ReThinkNYC. To wit:
·  March 14, 2024: 42 trains per hour

Regional Plan Assoc./Municipal Arts Society event)

·  June 12, 2024: 44-46 trains per hour

Railroads/ReThinkNYC info sharing session

·  August 5, 2024: 38 trains per hour

Railroads’ event open to general public at NYU

·  October 2, 2024: 40 trains per hour

Doubling Trans Hudson Capacity Report

·  November 19, 2024: 48 trains per hour

Station Working Advisory Group aka SWAG meeting

What is amazing and telling is that the only time WSP and the FX Collaborative ever allege that RethinkNYC’s plan would not attain even 40 trains per hour (let alone 48) was at a meeting open to the general public on August 5th of last year where they issued the number of 38 trains per hour. Could someone have had their hand on the scale? Time will tell. Certainly, in smaller group settings, the ReThinkNYC number has always proceeded upward; in fact in November, they openly acknowledged that ReThinkNYC’s plan could attain 48 trains per peak hour with some sheepish and self-serving caveats. Unfortunately, the public was not present to hear this admission.
The Railroads’ (and their consultants’) efforts have been conflicted and the results wobbly and inexplicable. We certainly made the FRA aware that the Railroads were using one number with us in small group settings and dramatically different numbers with the general public. This could not have sat well with them. Nor could the Railroads’ failure, even at this late date, to run simulations of their plans against through-running using Rail Traffic Controller (RTC) software–the rail industry’s market-leading software for projecting station capacity–have sat well with the FRA. It would appear to us the Railroads, which use this software daily for their own planning purposes, fear that RTC simulations will confirm the validity of through-running.
At least the MTA’s Janno Lieber, recently and to his credit, indicated in a Brian Lehrer radio show interview yesterday that he is open to exploring through-running options and confirmed that Governor Hochul does not want to see Block 780 demolished. We can only hope for more epiphanies to the obvious truths of through-running from new Amtrak senior management, NJ Transit, the RPA and an ever shrinking number of through-running opponents. After all the RPA once had it right (admittedly more than ten years ago) when RPA Tom Wright acknowledged that: “It’s almost more pathetic that it’s out there [through-running] and everyone knows it should be done, and no one [has] been able to force the agreements that are needed to make it happen.” (S. Laskow, Politico, January 27, 2014). We need through-running in this half century not the 22nd.
3. We now know from the FRA that the two $72 million grants to the Railroads for Penn Station revitalization were supposed to be accompanied by appropriate community outreach. But the precise opposite has occurred. The Railwords created the SWAG (as distinct from the previously existing Community Advisory Committee Working Group aka CACWG) and took care to exclude known dissenters from the Railroads community meetings, including:

·  Dr. Robert Paaswell, former head of the Chicago Transit Authority and Director Emeritus of the University Transportation Research Center;

·  Any and all representatives of ReThinkNYC;

·  Concerned citizen and resident of the Penn Station district, and spokesperson for the at-risk Block 780 Gene Sinigalliano.

·  Alon Levy and Tim Lazaroff of the Effective Transit Alliance (because they live abroad and the Railroads apparently are against Zoom participation in meetings.)

·  Layla Law-Gisiko, head of the City Club of New York

It took some doing but in the end, State Assemblymember Anthony Simone mercifully got the SWAG to include Mr. Sinigalliano. But an advisory group whose membership is restricted for such petty reasons is typical of the high-handed, kangaroo court methods of many of those who purported to manage the Penn Station projects. Indeed, efforts to freeze out public opinion started early and were evident in the Empire State Development Corporation’s original attempt to ram its General Project Plan down the throats of a public that abhorred it. This included sidestepping New York City’s Unified Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which mandates community involvement. More recently, the MTA’s invention of a so-called categorical exclusion to exempt it from applicable environmental regulations concerning station reconstruction, thereby further freezing out community involvement was to similar effect. These actions hardly evince a commitment to transparency or community outreach as the feds required in making their two most recent grants.

4. The Railroads’ plans do nothing about widening Penn Station’s barely-legal, perilously narrow train platforms dating from 1910. That’s ironic because it was the New York State Legislature’s 2018 declaration that Penn Station and its means of ingress and egress were “a clear public safety hazard” (Part MMM, page 177) that set in motion the current efforts to upgrade the rail hub. With $50 billion being spent on the Gateway Tunnels and Penn Station, the Federal Railroad Administration will no doubt expect us to address the deplorable and dangerous state of the existing platforms rather than concoct yet another batch of incremental improvements.

5. Governor Hochul has said she was talking to President Trump about creating a Penn Station as “magnificent” as the Moynihan. This was in keeping with her June 2023 invitation to “any architect or engineer” to compete for the creation of a “world-class masterpiece” at Penn Station. The Governor indicated that Trump gave every indication that he, too, wanted a beautiful Penn Station. Meanwhile, the MTA was telling the SWAG that a station as magnificent as the Moynihan or anything resembling a “world-class masterpiece” was not in the cards because it had miscalculated the cost and space needs of HVAC equipment for the new station. Such public realm amenities as an enhanced walkway to Herald Square, the promised light-filled mid-block Train Hall, architect John McAslan’s light-filled corners at 33rd and 31st Streets on Eighth Avenue will apparently have to be jettisoned due to this miscalculation. Specifically, the MTA indicated that:

 “…Preliminary engineering work has uncovered a set of unanticipated challenges for the station. This includes needing a larger footprint for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and other mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) equipment and critical building systems than the Penn Station Master Plan had estimated. Through preliminary engineering work, the railroads have identified additional structural complexities necessitating changes to their conceptual plans, such as the precise placement of the station’s entrance and vertical circulation elements on Eighth Avenue.”

                                                        -(SWAG: 11/19/2024 meeting summary)

So, while we are all looking to see what the Federal takeover of the Penn Station project will mean for the most important infrastructure project in the city and the nation – and many in New York have reservations about what the Administration might be planning – we think the Railroads’ intransigence and penchant for hijinx have brought this on.

As to our cautious optimism, we are pleased that representatives of the FRA have confirmed that they will take a fresh look at through-running as reported by Mike Oreskes in the West Side Spirit article.

This is a positive development because through-running is so essential to Greater New York’s future – its economy, environment, and ability to compete effectively with other global capital cities. It is also critical to the 600,000 passengers and growing who pass through Penn Station each day and deserve a much improved commuting experience. For our part, we continue to call for a bona fide review of proposals for Penn Station within the footprint of today’s Penn Station, including through-running based on RTC software–which, as noted above, is widely used in the rail industry to measure station capacity.

Other reasons for our cautious optimism are conveyed in the attached op-ed piece by Sam Turvey that appeared in last Friday’s Chelsea Community News. It is linked and pasted below in full.

While some may disagree with us, we believe it’s incontrovertible that the public hasn’t been getting a fair shake from the Railroads and their few supporters. It is time to shake things up and unless and until proven otherwise, we are choosing to be optimistic.

Source: RethinkNYC

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