Need 2nd Penn Station tunnel: Amtrak boss
PENN STATION commuters are traveling on borrowed time as long as there’s no backup Hudson River tunnel, Amtrak’s chairman told city powerbrokers Tuesday morning.
The feds and local lawmakers need to quickly hammer out a deal to fund construction of a new Hudson River tunnel, a massive $20 billion effort known as the Gateway Program, said Amtrak chief Anthony Coscia.
“We have no time to waste in solving this problem,” he said.
If funding is finalized, construction could start as early as March, when the environmental study wraps up, Coscia said.
“In the 21st century, we can’t allow 10% of America’s (gross domestic product) that this region creates to rely on something so fragile,” he told the Association for a Better New York.
If the existing, century-old tunnel that was battered by Hurricane Sandy needs to close unexpectedly, traffic at Penn Station would be cut to just six trains an hour, 75% fewer than the 24 that run through the country’s busiest transit hub hourly.
New York and New Jersey officials have been pressing President Trump to cover half of the cost of the project — matching a deal agreed to under former President Barack Obama. Trump met with Gov. Cuomo and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about Gateway in Washington on Thursday. Cuomo has said the states, through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, should not foot more than half the bill, based on the tunnel’s importance to the national economy.
Officials who attended the meeting with Trump left with the impression that Trump backed the new rail tunnel and was open to covering half, with Schumer characterizing the President as “very positive” about Gateway.
Coscia said he was glad to see that Gateway talks were being held at the highest levels.
“From all accounts, it was I think a very productive meeting,” Coscia told reporters after the breakfast.
“I think it gave an opportunity for all the key stakeholders to share their views and for the administration to ask questions that I think are good questions about the project, its significance and options for funding it.” AUTUMN OF Anguish? Amtrak successfully repaired a single Penn Station track and a critical section of rails during the socalled “Summer of Hell” — but there’s still more work to do, Amtrak Chairman Anthony Coscia said Tuesday. Remaining repair work may require service outages that go beyond nights and weekends, though no specific project or timeline was offered. “I anticipate that there will be projects that we will propose going forward that in some instances can’t be accomplished during the typical overnight and weekend outages,” Coscia said after a breakfast with the Association for a Better New York. The “Summer of Hell,” coined by Gov. Cuomo, referred to cuts in rushhour service of NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak necessary for crews to complete about two years’ worth of repairs in just two months. But it fell short of the catastrophic mess officials and riders initially feared.