Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has taken the reins of the future of Penn Station and we, as close chroniclers of the pitfalls of Penn for decades, shout with great enthusiasm: “Go, sir, go!” The place, mismanaged by Amtrak for more than a half century and divided into balkanized fiefdoms, is an embarrassment to America’s premier city.
Duffy, having pushed aside the MTA as the lead agency for a better Penn, must as his first immediate order of business cancel Amtrak’s partial closure of the vital East River Tunnel, connecting Penn to Queens, Long Island and New England.
New Yorkers like Rep. Elise Stefanik (who enlisted all the N.Y. House GOP delegation) have been begging Amtrak to avoid a closure that will kill 25% of all service between Albany and Manhattan for the next three years, hurting constituents of Stefanik and many others.
Also wiped out will be 10% of peak rush hour trains into Penn on the LIRR, hurting constituents of Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.
Even the delightful excursion tours by the nonprofit United Railroad Historical Society of N.J. using vintage rail cars, like the meticulously restored historical 1948 Hickory Creek observation car built by the New York Central, have been eliminated for years to come.
And that assumes that three years won’t be six years.
And even worse, having only three of the four East River tubes working will create a total meltdown when there is a normal glitch with equipment or signals or tracks.
The closure must not happen, not for six years or three years or even a day and Duffy must order Amtrak to find another way to repair the tunnel. It’s like having to repave an important road and barring all traffic for three years. Nonsense, do the work nights and weekends, keeping normal service in place.
That is how every other railroad in the world does repairs. Ask the Brits. Ask the Swiss. Ask the Japanese. The Port Authority spent $600,000 on a study from the experts at London Bridge Associates proving that nights and weekends repairs work perfectly.
On Tuesday, we asked the leaders of Amtrak about the East River Tunnel closure starting April 28 and they themselves are worried.
Executive Vice President Gery Williams: “It is going to be very tricky. It is going to be challenging. And, just as you said, things will happen in one of those other three tunnels.”
Chair Tony Coscia said: “What we are doing in the East River Tunnel is likely to inconvenience a lot of people. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t revisit our assumptions to make sure that they are accurate, or can be improved or whether there are operational things we can take into place relative to inconveniencing people less. Every day we are revisiting whether or not there is something we missed. Every day we are revisiting is there a way we can stage things a little bit differently to make less of a burden on people.”
We asked about nights and weekend repairs and Coscia said: “That, and everything else is on the table.”
Mr. Duffy, make Amtrak take it off the table and put it into practice and save the rides for countless New Yorkers. If Amtrak can’t do it, bring in someone who can.
