Big 3 Railroads Plan to Work Together on New Plan for Penn Station; Activists Still Wary

The railroads that use Penn Station are convening a working group of outside advocates to review, and support, their complicated and intersecting plans to improve and expand the aging station.

“Amtrak, MTA, and NJ TRANSIT are engaging with a diverse set of regional stakeholders around the future of Penn Station,” The railroads said in an exclusive joint statement to Straus News.

The statement appeared to combine in one conversation what previously the railroads had generally held separate: the renovation of the station under the supervision of the MTA (which runs the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North) and the expansion of the station, which Amtrak and New Jersey Transit say will be needed in the next decade.

“This New York Penn Station Working Advisory Group (SWAG) is convening to discuss and provide input on our joint vision to transform the station complex,” the railroads said. This includes, the statement said, “broad support of investments needed to improve the customer experience and prepare for ridership growth and increased service.”

The group is being established at a pivotal time. With the collapse of the New York office market, the plan to fund station rebuilding and expansion with massive real estate development has stalled. Governor Hochul has said she will press ahead without that, but there has been little visible progress.

At the same time, neighborhood advocates and preservationists have been resisting what Amtrak and New Jersey Transit say will be the need to physically expand the station, possibly by tearing down the block to the south, to accommodate a doubling of service under the Hudson River.

The urgency is compounded by a general belief that the presidential election is a ticking clock, with a new Trump/Vance administration far less likely than a Harris/Walz administration to support the billions in federal investment that the station plans will call for.

Members of the working group include Tom Wright, President of the Regional Plan Association, Elizabeth Goldstein, President of the Municipal Art Society and Ranae Reynolds Executive director of The Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

“We will be sharing more details about the SWAG and its work in the coming weeks,” the railroads said.

“It’s the opportunity to talk about what the vision should be,” Goldstein said, “that’s what I’ll be walking into the room wanting to do. How are all these pieces going to fit together? How is it going to be a single station and not Amtrak’s fiefdom over here? And New Jersey Transit’s fiefdoms over there and the MTA’s fiefdom over there? Thinking about it from a customer perspective.”

She noted that even in Amtrak’s new Moynihan station, a vast improvement, Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and Long Island railroad still have separate train notitication boards and information desks.

“That’s one tiny example of the problem,” she said.

She also said she hoped the group would be able to discuss plans for the neighborhoods around Penn Station. The state’s original redevelopment plan was heavily tilted toward office buildings. Goldstein noted that “mixed neighborhoods”–where work, living and entertainment where blended–had thrived better in and since Covid than pure office neighborhoods.

Two voices notable for their absence from the working group are Samuel Turvey, Chair of ReThinkNYC, and Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

They have been advocating for an independent review of plans by the Railroads for expansion of Penn Station, arguing that the destruction of the block 780 south of Penn station was unnecessary.

They have said the additional service can be accommodated by reorganizing how the commuter lines operate, running trains through Penn Station rather than back and forth from Penn station. But the railroads say this won’t create enough additional capacity.

The tri-state Transportation campaign has also argued for a system of running trains through Penn Station. Reynolds said she saw her role on the working group as “representing the perspective of advocates who want to see a well-designed plan that greatly improves the experience of commuters” and “that envisions a future with better regional connectivity rather than piecemeal, hodgepodge projects.”

Turvey said he had received no outreach from the railroads, nor had the key advocate for the preservation of Block 780 Gene Sinigalliano, a resident of the block, which contains apartments, a parking garage and a Roman Catholic Church.

Community groups rallied at an all-day block party on Seventh Avenue and 30th street on Sept. 13 to underline their resistance to an expansion of Penn Station into their block.

“Notwithstanding steadfast and broad public opposition, the Railroads (Amtrak, the MTA and NJ Transit) are hoping to continue to “weigh and measure” Block 780 and part of adjacent blocks for demolition via their Penn Station Working Group and Station Working Group Advisory Committee (“SWAG”-really?)--which are in the process of being formed,” Turvey wrote in a newsletter to his followers Thursday.

“The wildly expensive demolition is premised on the Railroads claimed need to expand Penn Station to the south to meet the alleged doubling of commuters from New Jersey in the decades to come based on self serving and quite limited analysis that puzzlingly shows little impact to commuting patterns from the Covid 19 pandemic,” Turvey wrote. “The analysis was only performed by folks who have favored demolishing the Penn neighborhood for almost a decade--hardly an objective look.

“The ‘double, double toil and trouble’ crowd at the Railroads are racing to cobble together the details of their plan to try to get the proposed demolition approved before the fall elections. At present, the federal government has rightly rejected all funding requests for this demolition which only makes sense as the Railroad’s plans are inconsistent with federal regulatory guidance which quite clearly disfavors the dated operating model the Railroads are trying to foist on all of us.”

Another group not included in the Penn Station Working Group is the Effective Transit Alliance, which has also advocated for through-running as an alternative to expanding Penn Station’s footprint.

“Sadly, they have not reached out to us here at ETA,” said the groups Executive Director, Blair Lorenzo.

Lorenzo said her group had been “very disappointed” by a presentation by Amtrak at a recent forum sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Municipal Art Society.

It seems to continue the railroads’ long history of trying to find reasons that through-running service at Penn isn’t possible,” Lorenzo said, “rather than honestly looking for ways to make it work.”