A new report on the future of Penn Station published Wednesday concludes the only way to expand train capacity at the rail hub is to expand its footprint — supporting Amtrak’s years-long proposal to tear down a Midtown block south of 31st Street to install new tracks.
The release of the report comes as construction is underway on the $16 billion Gateway project to build a new Hudson River tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey. Amtrak hopes, with its completion, to double the number of trains Penn Station is capable of handling in an hour from 24 to 48.
The report, which was written by consultants and commissioned by Amtrak, NJ Transit and the MTA, found that constructing a new set of tracks beneath the existing ones at Penn Station to meet that target would be unfeasible. It also found that “through-running” — an idea popular among many transit advocates that would consolidate NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road service so each railroad wouldn’t have to stop and turn around at Penn Station — would also fall short. The report states the through-running option would require widening all the station’s existing platforms, and would only expand the station’s capacity to 40 trains per hour.
“The study really aims to answer the question: ‘Can we achieve the capacity goals of the Penn Station Capacity Expansion Project and the Gateway Program within the existing footprint of Penn Station?’” Petra Messick, senior program director at the Gateway Program at Amtrak, said at a briefing with reporters. “Spoiler alert, we cannot.”
That leaves open two possibilities: add tracks to either the north or south of Penn Station, the latter of which has already been proposed. Amtrak officials have for more than a decade pitched a new “Penn South” station as part of the Gateway Program, which would require the demolition of a parcel known as “Block 780” south of 31st Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
The legislatures in both New York and New Jersey passed legislation in 2019 that would allow for southern expansion to be included in the Gateway Program, pending an agreement between the governors of both states as well as Amtrak. The new Hudson River tunnels now under construction through the project are designed to run beneath 30th Street, just south of the existing station.
The idea for a new Penn South has faced harsh criticism from Midtown residents who want to preserve the block — as well as former NYC Transit President Andy Byford, who now works at Amtrak.
Layla Law-Gisiko, the president of the City Club of New York who for more than two decades served on the Manhattan community board that includes Penn Station, called the new report “troubling.”
“Even if we take at face value the assertion of the railroads, it is important to note that currently the southern expansion modality does not deliver the throughput that the railroads claim they need,” she said. “Let’s put more brainpower to it rather than rushing to the conclusion.”
Law-Gisiko said she supports the through-running option and believes it hasn’t been thoroughly evaluated, noting Paris, London, Seoul and Tokyo all have major rail hubs that use through-running.
Still, Foster Nichols, a senior vice president at WSP, the consulting firm that helped draft the new report, said through-running could still be possible down the road.
“That has been a commitment of the three railroads to not to do anything at Penn Station that would preclude that from happening in the future,” he said.
Nichols nonetheless noted that combining LIRR and NJ Transit service at Penn Station would require widening the existing platforms to give riders enough space to board and disembark trains at the same time. He said construction on such a project would disrupt service for more than a decade.
“It would take something like 12 years of construction, with permanent outages that would roll from one side of the station to the other,” he told reporters at the briefing. “During that period, Penn Station would have 30% less capacity than it does today.”
Officials from the rail agencies noted during the briefing that plans for expanding Penn Station are “advancing in parallel” with the MTA’s plans to upgrade the existing Penn Station, a project that began under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and is continuing under Gov. Hochul.
It’s still unclear how much a project to expand capacity at Penn Station would cost.
“Everything we’re talking about [is] very expensive,” Messick said.