All aboard for E. Side Access, er, ‘Grand Central Madison’
A grand name was given Tuesday to the Long Island Rail Road’s new hub deep beneath Manhattan.
The long-overdue East Side Access station — to open later this year — was dubbed “Grand Central Madison” in a nod to the storied Grand Central Terminal 10 stories overhead and the project’s access points a short block west under Madison Ave., Gov. Hochul announced.
“When you’re talking about a place as iconic as Grand Central, you can’t change that,” Hochul said during a news conference in the new station, which is set to open to passengers in December.
It’s time to retire the project’s longtime name, the governor said. “What does East Side Access mean? Where is it taking you? The entire East Coast?” Hochul asked.
Hochul said the new name aims to give “people a sense of hope.” But New Yorkers who have followed the project over the past 25 years might still associate it with cost overruns and blown schedules that have made East Side Access one of the most maligned American infrastructure projects so far this century.
The $11.1 billion project kicked off in the late 1990s, and encompasses a new seven-blocklong hall 15 stories beneath the street.
It also includes a new tunnel beneath the Hudson River that’s been in the works since 1967, when New York voters approved $2.5 billion of bonds to pay for transportation improvements that were halted during the financial crisis of the 1970s.
Early Metropolitan Transportation Authority projections estimated the work would wrap in 2009 at a cost of $4.8 billion. The cost projection rose to $8.2 billion in 2012 and to $10.2 billion in 2014. By 2018 it had reached its current $11.1 billion price tag.
The project will open 13 years behind its original schedule. MTA Chairman Janno Lieber — who joined the agency as head of construction in 2018 — said he’s spent years fighting further delays to the project.
“Many people said to me, ‘It’s got all these problems, it’s going to be delayed, we can kick the can down the road another couple of years,’ ” said Lieber. “I said no. We’re sticking with 2022.”
Hochul and Lieber say the new platforms beneath the current Grand Central Terminal will increase ridership on the Long Island Rail Road, which carries about two-thirds as many daily riders as it did before the pandemic.
LIRR trains will still serve Penn Station once Grand Central Madison debuts — but some of the existing service will be redirected to the new hub on the East Side.
Hochul said the new train platforms would allow the LIRR to increase the number of New York City-bound morning rushhour trains from to 158 from 113 and increase the number of outbound evening rush-hour trains to 115 from 98.
MTA officials plan to release later this week a list of proposed LIRR schedule changes for when the new station opens.
The boost to LIRR service may be threatened by imminent repairs to four East River train tunnels that are owned by Amtrak and used by LIRR trains to get into Manhattan.
Those tunnels were damaged in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy, and MTA officials last year said the new station beneath Grand Central must open before they can be repaired.
In a debate similar to the one surrounding former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to fix the L train’s East River tunnel, Amtrak and MTA officials have for years argued over whether the latest tunnel repairs can be done on nights and weekends rather than requiring an around-the-clock shutdown that would hamper LIRR service.
“We’ve always understood that Amtrak had to do the work on the tunnels that are their tunnels,” Lieber said Tuesday. “We understand that they have to do that work . ... Amtrak has to pick up the pace on design, but we’re making plans for that.”