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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Mon Nov 3 00:47:28 2025, in response to Re: Metro-North service to Rensselaer launching in 2026, posted by Italianstallion on Mon Oct 27 16:55:27 2025.
LOL, I'm not. I'm a realist. And now MTA is playing the "blame Amtrak" game . . . (PS. Where did $2.9 billion suddenly come from?)
The City
MTA Rails Against Amtrak for Delays to Metro-North Penn Station ConnectionMTA officials ripped into Amtrak Monday for repeated delays in bringing Metro-North service to Penn Station as part of a $2.9 billion megaproject that is running years behind schedule.
The projected completion of the Penn Access project, which would also involve the construction of four new Metro-North stations in The Bronx, could be pushed back three years to 2030, MTA officials said, blaming the national rail company for not sticking to an agreed-to schedule for MTA crews to access tracks needed to complete the work.
“You need outages to get work done, weekend outages,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction & Development, said during a MTA committee board meeting. “And I don’t think this is in dispute — seven of the 48 outages committed to on paper in an agreement between Amtrak and the MTA, only seven were provided in the first two years.”
Penn Access groundbreaking took place in December 2022, with plans to have service up and running by 2027 at new stations in Hunts Point, Morris Park, Parkchester/Van Nest and Co-op City.
But MTA officials said the project, which requires extensive rehabilitation work along Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line, was “spiraling off in the wrong direction” because of Amtrak’s lack of cooperation from the start, as The City previously reported.
“We set out to do this work with federal support because it was the path to getting service to the East Bronx,” Torres-Springer said. “But it meant working on Amtrak’s territory with their cooperation and oversight, which they committed to at the beginning of this project.”
Among the problems, Torres-Springer said, was a lack of staff support. In particular, he cited 98 days when Amtrak foremen no-showed.
“Without a foreman, you can’t take track out,” he said. “You can’t work on the track.”
The MTA publicly floated a proposal Monday to launch partial service by 2027 to and from three of the planned Bronx stations — all but Hunts Point — as long as Amtrak agrees to provide a framework for putting the project schedule back on track.
“By the time the first trains arrive in 2027, we’ll see a Bronx that is better connected with direct access to Penn Station, and to job opportunities in Westchester, as well as Connecticut,” said Justin Vonashek, president of Metro-North, the country’s second-largest commuter railroad. “Bronx residents will no longer have to choose between proximity and opportunity.”
An Amtrak spokesperson said the MTA did not inform the railroad of its Penn Access analysis, adding that the railroad has taken numerous steps to advance the project. Those include tweaking Amtrak schedules or temporarily suspending service to allow more work to be done safely and changing work rules for worker safety.
“Amtrak has invested over $140 million and significant staff resources on the Penn Station Access project,” spokesperson Jason Abrams said in a statement. “We remain committed to this critical project, and being good stewards of taxpayer investment for Amtrak, MTA customers, New York residents and travelers.”
The head of the MTA suggested the cost overruns and delays were reminiscent of the saga of East Side Access, the project to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to a massive new hub built deep beneath Grand Central Terminal. It opened years behind schedule in January 2023 as the rebranded Grand Central Madison.
“Let’s not have East Side Access again; let’s start the service on time,” said Janno Lieber, the MTA chairperson and chief executive, on Monday. “Deadly serious.”
The City reported in March 2023 that the dueling railroads agreed to a pact that would give MTA crews access to Amtrak tracks in an effort to put Penn Access back on schedule.
But tensions have repeatedly flared up since then between the MTA and Amtrak, with Lieber earlier this month accusing the national railroad of slowing down the MTA “every day of the week by not giving outages.”
“We can’t get work done and the people in Co-op City are waiting for a goddamn train,” Lieber said Oct. 6 after marking the completion of the first phase of work to rebuild the Park Avenue Viaduct, which carries Metro-North trains through East Harlem. “And it’s outrageous and it’s been a problem from the start of that [Penn Access] project.”
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