In just four days, this Friday, May 9, Amtrak is set to ignore all modern construction methods and the bipartisan pleas of New York leaders and riders and shut down part of the vital East River Tunnel for at least three years, putting at risk the commute for more than 100,000 daily riders on the Long Island Rail Road.
Only President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy can stop this runaway train of the federal railway monopoly and spare years of agony for passengers using Penn Station, which also includes ten of thousands on NJTransit.
Both the president and secretary know about the dire situation and the rapidly approaching nightmare thanks to the alarm being raised in these columns and amplified loudly by Gov. Hochul, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Congressman Mike Lawler, who have called for nights and weekends repairs, the norm elsewhere.
Trump and Duffy must order Amtrak, whose Biden-era CEO, Steve Gardner, they just rightly fired, to immediately abandon the shutdown of the Queens-Manhattan link and demand the tunnel be repaired nights and weekends, the standard everywhere else in the world.
Amtrak’s blind arrogance has already caused the cancellation of 10% of the LIRR inbound a.m. rush to Penn, as well as 25% of daily trains between Albany and Penn, and a terribly long layover in the daily Adirondack train to the North Country, unfair upstate service cuts that were first decried by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik last year.
Nights and weekends repair can immediately restore all the service that has been reduced and avoid a catastrophe that is likely if the foolish Amtrak demolition of the tunnel occurs.
Stefanik, Hochul, Blakeman and Lawler are not railroad experts, but Rob Free, the president of the LIRR, is. Unlike Amtrak’s president, Roger Harris, a career airline man, Free is a career railway man, with decades at the LIRR. Free wants nights and weekends repairs.
Amtrak’s claims that nights and weekends repairs are impossible or astronomically expensive are all lies. The MTA fixed the nearby East River tunnel for the L-train nights and weekends, saving time and money. Amtrak contends that their tunnel is different. Which is why the Port Authority spent $600,000 to hire the world renowned experts at a private firm called London Bridge Associates. The London Bridge Associates 208-page report, published in 2020, proves that Amtrak’s New York tubes can be fully restored for another 100 years of service nights and weekends.
Every one of Amtrak’s objections was addressed and solved by LBA. The power systems, the overhead catenary, the 3rd rail, converting from ballasted track to direct rail fixation and drainage, signals, communication, the bench walls, fireproofing, lighting, ventilation, access and egress, all compliant with National Fire Protection Association section 130 Standard for Fixed Guideway Transit and Passenger Rail Systems.
Amtrak just refused to accept the truth. The smartest approach, recommended by the engineering faculties of Columbia and Cornell, brought in for the L-train, is that any damaged bench walls be sealed under shells made out of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) that is as strong as steel and will last forever and the power cables be put on racks on the wall.
Amtrak says that 12,000 volts of AC is too dangerous to be racked. In London, the trains run on 25,000 volts and they use racks and today’s cables are self-extinguishing. Does Amtrak contend that electricity is different here?
The only weakness of FRP is that it can be degraded by exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight. Hey, guess what, Amtrak? There is no sunlight in a tunnel under a river. Even an airline guy like Harris should be able to understand that.
Duffy and Trump must not listen to Roger Harris at Amtrak. They should listen to Rob Free at the LIRR. His railroad carries more than 100,000 people to Penn each day, more than 10-fold Amtrak’s number. The LIRR is by far the biggest user of the East River Tunnel and Penn, with more than 400 trains a day.
The LIRR has an on-time performance of 97%, with a six-minute window. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains are on-time only 78%, and that is with a 15-minute window. Trust the LIRR, don’t trust Amtrak.
Free says that the four tubes of the tunnel allow this to be the busiest rail corridor in America. When there is an occasional problem during rush hour with a vehicle or the track or a signal, there is still enough operational flexibility to adjust with three tubes. Running on three tubes for a short while can be tight and the schedule might slip by a few minutes, but trains and people can still move.
However, once Amtrak recklessly closes one of the tubes, which has never happened since Penn Station opened in 1910, it will be a standard three-tube setup for at least the next three years (and probably longer).
Then Free’s nightmare will come to life when one of the three tubes is lost to a rolling stock malfunction, a tie fire, a bum signal, a track defect or anything else. That incident will turn the Penn-Queens link into just a two-tube tunnel, which at rush hours means no one is moving. Each train can carry 1,000 commuters and there is a train every few minutes. There would quickly be thousands of passengers not moving and stuck at Penn.
How many of those catastrophes will happen over the course of three years? How many such meltdowns with people not going home for hours, if at all, are acceptable to Amtrak? They don’t care, because as the owner of Penn and the tubes, their trains always have the priority.
And all the same goes for NJTransit. While NJT passengers don’t ride in the East River Tunnel, every morning dozens of their trains come in from Jersey, drop off commuters in Penn and then use the East River Tunnel to head to a storage facility in Sunnyside Yards in Queens for the day.
In the p.m, those empty trains leave Queens and go to Penn to pick up their riders. When the East River Tunnel has an even slight problem, which it always has and always will, and is reduced to two tubes, no one will be moving on NJT.
It was under “Amtrak” Joe Biden that the LIRR/MTA was forced into a shotgun marriage with Amtrak to accept the closure. The MTA has always wanted to avoid a shutdown, but having the president on their side gave Amtrak the upper hand and the MTA had to knuckle under. No more.
It was wrong of Biden to do that. And now Trump can correct that error. Democrats like Hochul and Republicans like Blakeman, Lawler and Stefanik (all possible challengers to Hochul next year) are united.
Duffy should give Harris two options: Repair the East River Tunnel nights and weekends, or be fired, letting Duffy bring in someone competent who will.
