The most expensive railroad ever planned for New York is on track to be a mere “resiliency project” that doesn’t expand service.
The $16 billion Hudson River tunnels now under construction through the Gateway Program will double the number of trains that could move between Manhattan and New Jersey. But those extra trains would need somewhere to go — and there’s little room left at Penn Station, where the platforms during rush hour are packed with NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak riders.
For years, Amtrak officials have proposed a solution to that problem that would take advantage of Gateway’s potential. They have called to expand Penn Station to the south, which would add tracks and platforms to the country’s busiest transit hub. The move would require razing “Block 780,” a densely packed parcel of land below West 31st Street that, aside from St. John the Baptist Church, is mainly occupied by commercial buildings.
Gov. Kathy Hochul dashed that expansion plan during a news conference last month. “I’m not going to destroy a neighborhood,” Hochul said.
Her comments raise an uncomfortable question as federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffyhammers New York leaders for wasteful spending on public transit: Is the Gateway project worth it?
“The governor is right in the sense that pivoting away from [Block] 780 is a good idea, assuming you have a good plan,” said Steve Cohen, the former vice chair of the Port Authority who also served as secretary to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “The plan right now seems to be ‘we’re going to come up with a plan.’ But a plan to have a plan is not the ideal way to run a massive infrastructure project.”
When asked about an actual plan, Hochul’s representatives said she was more focused on renovating Penn Station’s current footprint than adding capacity.
"Governor Hochul is laser focused on fixing Penn now and continues to work with the railroad partners on achieving that shared goal,” the governor’s spokesperson Kara Cumoletti wrote in a statement.
Amtrak officials explained that Hochul’s stance against the expansion of Penn Station does not fly in the face of the Gateway program’s overall goal. That’s because the tunnels were approved and funded by the federal government not as a project to expand mass transit service in the region, but to act as a “resiliency” effort to protect existing train service.
Gateway officials have declared the only way to repair the existing 115-year-old train tunnels beneath the Hudson River that were damaged during Hurricane Sandy is to build a new set of tubes. Once those are constructed, the old ones can be closed and repaired. Once all the work is done, the extra tunnels will serve as a $16 billion backup.
Cohen and other New York transportation experts have long argued there’s a way to expand service at Penn Station without destroying Block 780 — but the solution might be more politically infeasible. The MTA and NJ Transit could in theory become a unified agency. Instead of LIRR and NJ Transit trains stopping at Penn Station and turning around, they could run through and combine as a holistic network linking the Garden State to Montauk.
Transportation planners have for decades called for this sort of “through-running,” but the governors of New York and New Jersey have never come to an agreement to make it happen. Amtrak considered the idea in a report published last year — but declared that making it a reality would require an expensive and disruptive reconfiguration of Penn Station’s existing tracks and platforms.
“We’re captive of the thinking that brought us here,” Cohen said. “The problems are more than a century old… If you believe in rail transportation, there really does have to be a recognition that we’re stuck with a model that itself needs an upgrade.”
Curious Commuter
Have a question for us? Use this form to submit yours and we may answer it in a future newsletter!
“Whatever happened with the MTA’s plan to add pee detectors to subway elevators?”
- Roland from Queens
The MTA in 2022 issued a call for a contractor to install technology on subway elevators that would send alerts when a foul odor was present.
Turns out, that idea was flushed right down the drain. MTA officials told Gothamist they gave up on the idea, saying they reached out to transportation officials in Boston and Atlanta who had tested elevator pee detectors.
“No other agency found results sufficiently promising to go beyond a pilot,” said MTA spokesperson David Steckel.
"To improve station cleanliness, New York City Transit has introduced new cleaning standards, scaled up specialized cleaning teams, and hired additional station cleaners. These new resources improve elevator cleanliness,” Steckel added.
Curious Commuter questions are exclusive for On The Way newsletter subscribers. Did a friend forward this to you? Sign up for free here to start asking questions.
We're also talking about...
Unprovoked attacks on the subways. According to the NYPD, felony assaults in the subway system hit a record last year — while robberies fell to an eight-year low.
“Some of it is the presence of folks who are struggling with mental illness, who are unpredictable and who do bad stuff unpredictably … We have to get those people into a better situation.”
Can a Google smartphone do the job of a veteran track inspector? The MTA tried sticking out-of-the-box smartphones on different parts of a subway train to see if the AI technology could identify track issues based on sounds. It worked.
Congestion tolls are staying put through the fall. The MTA, which is suing the U.S. Department of Transportation to keep congestion pricing in effect, filed papers in federal court laying out a briefing schedule that runs through October. The feds later posted to social media that they still wanted the agency to shut down the tolls later this month.
Teens: How would you stop subway surfing if you were the police commissioner? The NYPD is holding a teen essay contest looking for ideas. The winner gets $500.
Tariffs won’t make MTA construction projects any cheaper. And the agency’s construction costs are already among the highest of any transit system on the planet.
Need an e-bike charger? New York City property owners and tenants — with landlord approval — can now apply to install e-bike battery charging cabinets directly in front of their buildings.
