Penn Station Blog

June 29, 2017 12:00 AM

Tunnel vision: Don't just talk—build (Crain's NY) 

Mysore Nagaraja, Howard Sackel and Bob Previdi

Amtrak put everyone on notice in 2014 that its two 107-year-old Hudson River tunnels—the lifeblood of rail service into Penn Station and between Washington and Boston, for that matter—were severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy. A total shutdown of each tunnel would be needed to properly repair them. And to avoid the crippling 75% reduction in capacity that one tube's closure or failure would cause, a new tunnel would have to be built first.

Three years later, virtually nothing has happened. Everyone agrees on the need for a new tunnel, but not on how it should be built and funded. Meanwhile, the state has committed billions of dollars to spruce up inefficient Penn Station.

New Yorkers should be furious. We should not be running the risk of closing this important link for up to two years because we cannot focus on what is most important here.

There are a lot of good ideas for improving Penn Station and eventually linking it to Grand Central Terminal, but trying to fix everything at once is bogging down the process. Instead, let’s act now on what is most critical: building a single Hudson River tunnel within five years. After that, one of the aging tunnels could be closed, repaired, and reopened in about a year, followed by the second one. Two tunnels would always be open, and after seven years there would be three.

During that work we can craft a new vision for Amtrak and commuter rail in the region, including a simplified and more functional operation at Penn Station’s track level. Amtrak’s proposed Gateway project would add tracks and Penn and a tunnel in each direction under the Hudson, but that is only part of the answer. We must follow the path that nearly every other major world city—London, Paris and Tokyo, to name three—has taken by routing commuter trains through the station. Even Philadelphia has done this.

Riders do not understand how much their suffering stems from the complex, underground dance between Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit that keeps 1,000 trains and 400,000 passengers in motion. And with plans being advanced to add Metro-North service to Penn Station, the congestion and bottlenecks will only get worse.

Other world-class cities have realized that a solution is to simplify operations at the heart of the system. London is nearly finished with its Crossrail plan, which will link western and eastern commuter rail lines through a new twin tunnel from Paddington to East Liverpool Street Stations. Paris has the Réseau Express Régional running below the city’s Metro and through the city, connecting major transfer hubs. And in the mid-1980s, Philadelphia eliminated its railroads’ dead ends by building the Center City Commuter Tunnel to connect its two rail terminals.

Connecting commuter rail lines into longer, subway-like operations allows trains to run more frequently and with less delay to more destinations. Here, New Jersey could be connected with Long Island, the northern suburbs and Connecticut by linking Penn Station to Grand Central.

Too much discussion has been focused on redesigning Penn Station’s passenger facilities before we really know what its foundation—the long-term train operations—will look like. So before we lay out a new Penn Station, with or without Madison Square Garden on top, we need to understand what the operation and track layout will look like in the future, with two new tunnels under the Hudson and more through train movements to Queens as well as Grand Central.

All this will take time to sort itself out, but we don't have that luxury with the old tunnels, which are on their last legs. It is critical that we fix what we have first, and building the new Hudson River tunnel will allow us to do so. During the several years while that construction takes place, we can plan the interconnectivity we need from our regional commuter rail system.

Mysore Nagaraja is a transportation consultant and former president of MTA Capital Construction. Howard Sackel is is senior vice president and regional manager for New York at Paco Technologies and was formerly director of the ARC Tunnel Program for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Bob Previdi is a transportation lobbyist and former planner and spokesman at NYC Transit.

Rail Services in 2015

Amtrak 100 trains/day 28,000 passengers

Long Island Rail Road 550 trains/day 220,000 passengers

New Jersey Transit 350 trains/day 160,000 passengers

Total 1000 trains/day 408,000 passengers