A $2.9 billion project to extend Metro-North Railroad service into New York City's Penn Station has been delayed by about seven months, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said Monday.
The hold up is because of the fact that the MTA relies on the owner of the existing tracks, Amtrak, to allow access to those lines during construction. While the MTA has a deal with Amtrak to open up the tracks and provide staffing, it has yet to fully deliver that commitment, said John Torres-Springer, president of MTA s Construction Development, at a monthly committee meeting.
They have not been able to live up to the agreement, and we have ensured that they have been on notice of that," said Torres-Springer during the meeting. The good news is that Amtrak acknowledges these problems and in part because of the strong agreement that we negotiated with them, they are working together with us on a recovery schedule. Metro-North operates through the Grand Central Terminal on the east side of Manhattan. The Penn Station Access project is scheduled to finish October 2027 instead of March of that year. It will shorten commute times by about 50 minutes and connect the East Bronx, New York City's northern suburbs and Connecticut to Manhattan's west side.
The project includes building four new accessible stations in the Bronx and upgrading Amtrak's Hell Gate line. Amtrak didn't have an immediate response to the MTA's comments on the delays.
The MTA, the largest US public transit agency, wants to avoid potential cost overruns. A similar problem with Amtrak resulted in $1 billion of additional expense to bring Long Island Rail Road service to Grand Central, which began last week, said Janno Lieber, MTA's chief executive officer.
That project, called East Side Access, required the MTA to rebuild Harold Interlocking in Queens, the nation's busiest rail interlocking and part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line.
Lieber said we had a delay. We have a repeat of that Harold Interlocking dynamic, but we have legal rights and none of us wants to exercise them. Amtrak is our partner and they have been trying to improve in the past. From the coin to high-Interest Bonds, the US s Debt-Limit Options aren't great.