Condemned to Penn Station hell
AMTRAK SCREWS COMMUTERS WITH DERAIL FIASCO, MTA SAYS
THE MTA AND NJ Transit railed against Amtrak on Wednesday, blasting their Penn Station landlord over aging infrastructure and poor maintenance in the wake of a derailment that has crippled the commuting hub for much of the week.
Amtrak said it hopes to have full rail service restored by Friday. Crews are working around the clock to restore rails damaged when an NJ Transit train derailed during Monday morning’s rush hour and knocked eight tracks out of commission.
But the repairs aren’t happening fast enough for Amtrak’s angry railroad tenants, or frustrated Penn Station passengers enduring yet another chaotic commute.
“This is usually the worst part,” said Susan Boscarino, 58, moments after she left the Midtown law firm where she works and began her trip home to New Brunswick, N.J. Her commute began by wading into a thick crowd under the big departure board to see what track her train would be leaving from.
“We’re all crammed in here like cattle,” Boscarino said. “We need a better station, and that hasn’t changed for years,”
Fed-up passengers who want to give the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and NJ Transit a piece of their mind must do what they do every morning and evening — wait in line. The agency heads say they’re fed up, too.
MTA brass expressed their frustration in a letter to Charles Moorman, CEO of Amtrak, which owns and maintains Penn Station, and detailed a “series of unacceptable infrastructure failures” disrupting Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit service.
“The current state of affairs is simply unacceptable,” the letter said.
Monday’s derailment was the second incident in less than two weeks. An Amtrak Acela train derailed March 24 and sideswiped an NJ Transit train during the morning rush hour.
About 230,000 LIRR riders use Penn Station each day, and about 100,000 people use NJ Transit to get into the city daily.
“The rippling delays are lasting longer and longer,” the letter from Acting MTA Board Chairman Fernando Ferrer and Interim MTA Director Ronnie Hakim said.
Earlier in March, switch problems at Penn Station caused headaches in the evening.
The commuting nightmares show that Amtrak is “not aggressively maintaining its tracks, switches and related equipment” and that “repairs have not happened as swiftly as needed,” the letter said.
NJ Transit’s boss went full throttle against Amtrak.
“Amtrak needs to step up to the plate,” said Steven Santoro, NJ Transit’s executive director. “They need to take the state of good repair of the Northeast Corridor seriously. It is Amtrak’s responsibility.”
Santoro said the agency’s three rail cars that were involved in the derailment had all passed 180-day inspections, though he stopped short of ruling them out as contributing factors since the cause of the investigation is still underway.
“We feel that those rail cars were in good shape,” he said
He said the agency is giving Amtrak $136 million to repair infrastructure and equipment.
"We expect results, we expect more focus and we expect better service from Amtrak for our customers," Santoro said.
He called on Amtrak to immediately form a team of its engineers and experts from NJ Transit and the LIRR to walk every inch of track at Penn Station for an “exhaustive” inspection and analysis of rail conditions and signal equipment.
In the long term, Santoro said, NJ Transit should have a bigger role in how Amtrak runs Penn Station.
“Having two derailments in just over a week is unacceptable, and our customers are bearing the brunt,” Santoro said. “We have and will continue to press Amtrak on the need for corrective actions now.”
Santoro was scheduled to tour the derailment site Wednesday and meet with peeved passengers.
Amtrak Chief Operating Officer Scot Naparstek said Tuesday the cause of the derailment is still under investigation, but he added that “there is no deferred maintenance that played a role.”
“There’s constant inspection of the infrastructure at Penn Station and frankly across our entire network,” Naparstek said the day after the derailment. “We are always inspecting.”
Moorman, in a statement, said Amtrak has asked the Federal Railroad Administration to review Penn Station’s infrastructure.
“We value our partnership with the commuter railroads and share the frustration these recent issues present to all of our customers,” Moorman said.
That was little comfort to Claire Austin, 51, whose 20-minute LIRR trip from Jamaica, Queens, to her Midtown job as an executive assistant became a 50-minute nightmare.
“I missed the connection, and then the other trains were 20 minutes apart,” Austin said. “Thanks, Amtrak.”