Shelved Penn Station fixes could avoid $17 billion expansion — if transit agencies actually work together: Post investigation
The controversial planned $17 billion expansion of Penn Station could be avoided — saving taxpayers cash and three midtown blocks from the wrecking ball — but only if the MTA, New Jersey Transit and Amtrak agreed to work together, a Post investigation found.
The MTA and NJ Transit — which operate the region’s commuter railroads — each prepared plans that collectively could double the number of trains Penn Station can fit, which experts and activists said would alleviate the need for the new terminal.
“If you cared about delivering the best bang for the public’s buck, you’d prioritize cost-effective investments to increase throughput and improve rider experience in Penn Station first,” said Barry Caro, a longtime transit activist and a veteran political consultant.
“Instead, we have a plan that acts like there is a blank check from Washington and cost is no object when that very clearly isn’t the case anymore, if it ever was,” he told The Post.
Officials from local governors to transit chiefs have argued that the mega-planned “Penn Expansion” is needed to handle additional trains rolling in when the under-construction Hudson River tunnels are finished.
The project — which involves razing part or all of three city blocks — has ballooned in both size and cost even before starting, soaring from an estimated $8.5-$9.5 billion to a potential $16.7 billion for a two-level station that would have 12 tracks, documents show.
But the Post’s investigation — which examined 1,000 pages of engineering reports and diagrams, many of which have never been made public — shows that when combined, the two shelved-plans would likely reach the sought-after 48-train mark and shave some $10 billion from the price tag.
Both plans were disqualified for failing to meet the 48 trains-per-hour standard when they were considered in isolation — as Amtrak and the other two transit behemoths pushed for the “Penn Expansion.”
The problem with the alternate proposals is the fractious relationship between the MTA and NJT, as well as Amtrak, which owns Penn Station, according to interviews with experts, officials, and activists.
The railroads have pursued the planned eye-wateringly expensive expansion because each wants room for their own independent operation inside of Penn Station instead of being forced to cooperate more closely, a document shows.
A 2011 Amtrak presentation seen by The Post says that a key benefit of the “Penn Expansion” project was to give the railroads “[s]table, semi-independent operations” in the massive complex.
The much-cheaper set-aside option, which would substantially re-engineer the existing Penn Station to hit the 48-train mark, for less than $7 billion, is doable — but not without cooperation, experts said.
The combined proposals even largely mirrors the plan laid out in 2022 by one of the region’s oldest transit policy watchdogs, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
“It is possible to create a new Penn Station that puts riders first, improving safety, reliability and service with new signals, tracks and redesigned platforms,” said Tri-State’s top infrastructure expert, Felicia Park-Rogers.
“We would like to see the railroads work together to put riders’ needs first,” she said. “They can put riders’ needs first and improve long-term capacity without spending $17 billion — but they have to work together to do it. And Amtrak has to get on board.”
Penn Station is owned and operated by Amtrak, though NJT and the MTA run hundreds more trains through it, thanks to a quirk of history after the collapse of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The MTA has done a substantial amount of work on the controversial “Penn Expansion” proposal, documents show, though officials there say it was at Amtrak’s behest.
“Maybe the planning should be led by the agencies that would use the complex the most,” suggested Yonah Freemark, a top researcher and expert on transit projects at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. “The MTA and New Jersey Transit are the primary users of the complex, not Amtrak.”
NJT projected its proposals would boost the number of trains that could fit through Penn Station and under the Hudson to as many as 38 per hour.
It’s 170-plus page “Penn Station Capacity Improvement Project” called for:
- Replacing the slow switches that force trains to crawl in from the Hudson River toward Penn’s platforms at 15 mph with new ones that would allow for 30 mph operations.
- Extending NJT’s platforms for Tracks 1-4 to the West End concourse, which would allow the agency to run longer trains and make it easier for passengers to board and disembark.
- Operational changes that would cut the amount of time it takes to reverse NJT trains out of Penn’s stub-ended tracks from 22 minutes to 18 minutes.
- Constructing just one new platform with two tracks immediately south of the current station, slashing the amount of eminent domain required south of West 31st Street.
The 2020 document estimated that construction of a new platform and the extension of the existing ones would cost approximately $1 billion at the time — which would grow to $1.3 billion when adjusting for the inflation bubble in 2021 and 2022.
There was no formal cost estimate provided for the switch work, but NJT gauged it would be “relatively minor” when compared to the platform work.
Combining it with the MTA’s shelved proposal would expand the current station’s capacity to 50 trains per hour — more than the maximum number that could fit through all four Hudson River tunnels.
It would upgrade the signals in the tunnels and station complex to allow trains to run more closely together and at higher speeds, much like the improvements currently underway on the subway’s lettered lines.
That would improve capacity throughout the station by potentially four trains per hour, the 2020 analysis revealed.
Additionally, it would re-engineer the middle portion of Penn Station — Tracks 5 to 16 — to finally replace many of it’s notoriously narrow train platforms with ones that are wide enough to accommodate crowds.
It would make the space by removing two tracks and reworking the support columns that hold up the station and Madison Square Garden, at a cost estimated at $3.5 billion to $3.9 billion, adjusting for inflation.
The wider platforms would slash the amount of time trains spend in stations in two ways: Allowing passengers to board and disembark simultaneously; and ending the practice of reversing trains out of the station, which jams up the traffic flows.
Instead, trains from Westchester and Long Island would continue onward to New Jersey and vice versa; which is how Penn Station was originally designed to operate. Commuters and travelers would benefit from getting new direct service, for example, from the Bronx or Queens to Newark Airport.
The reconstruction and operational changes would allow the railroads to run as many as eight more trains per hour through Penn Station, according to a 2021 presentation given to the Penn Station oversight board.
However, it would require Amtrak and the two transit agencies to cooperate on schedules and infrastructure programs like train orders and power system upgrades, which they have been loathed to do.
“This is value planning: We have these goals, and how do we get there. And we can do it by building a big hole in the ground or we can do it by doing a bunch of smaller things that get us where we need to go,” said Eric Goldwyn, who led the New York University team that issued a 400-page report examining MTA construction costs and design practices earlier this year.
In statements, the three railroads — Amtrak, the MTA and NJT — largely declined to comment on the specifics of The Post’s findings.
“Amtrak and our partners will analyze these scenarios to see what can be accomplished successfully and safely,” said Jason Abrams, a spokesman for the national carrier, which owns the station.
“The MTA’s focus is on fixing existing Penn Station for its 600,000 daily riders – and doing that work in the most cost-conscious way,” said a top agency executive, John McCarthy, in a statement. “That work is well underway, as evidenced by the new brightly lit, wider, modern, Long Island Rail Road concourse.”
NJT spokesman Jim Smith said in a statement that the Post’s premise was “flawed” because it was “[m]aking assumptions by simply combining theoretical operational concepts with the preliminary studies,” even though NJT’s own analysis did just that.
He added: “NJ TRANSIT remains committed to working with our transit partners on a genuinely functional and implementable design that takes full advantage of the capacity potential of the Gateway Program to ensure that trans-Hudson travel demand is met for generations to come.”
