Long Island Rail Road service could suffer for years as Amtrak repairs two damaged East River tunnels that connect Penn Station to Queens, MTA officials warned on Wednesday.
The transit agency’s board passed a resolution condemning the national railroad’s plan to fully close and shut down one tube at a time over the next three years, arguing the fixes should instead be completed on nights and weekends. Amtrak owns four tunnels beneath the East River, two of which were damaged in 2012 from flooding during Hurricane Sandy.
Amtrak’s plan would reduce the number of tunnels to three so one can be repaired. The crossings are primarily used by LIRR trains, but also service Amtrak trains and NJ Transit trains that park in Sunnyside during off-peak hours.
Fully closing a tunnel “leaves little to no room for error,” LIRR President Rob Free said during a news conference. “The slightest deviation could have significant impacts to our operations, reliability, including possible shutdowns of service depending on the issue.”
The MTA passed the resolution less than two weeks after the Trump administration gave control of the planned reconstruction of Penn Station to Amtrak, kicking the New York agency off the project. The MTA and Amtrak have argued for years over plans for Penn Station and the East River tunnels, and this week’s comments marked an escalation in the railroad feud.
MTA officials on Wednesday urged Amtrak to mimic the agency’s fix of the L train East River tunnel in 2019. Instead of fully closing the tunnel for more than a year, the agency at the last-minute scaled back the scope of the work and made repairs on nights and weekends. Gov. Kathy Hochul made the same request in a letter earlier this week.
“Amtrak’s track record, for us, is a little terrifying,” said MTA Chair Janno Lieber. “ We’re not going to sit idly by while our riders suffer because Amtrak just wants to do things the way they’ve always been done.”
The tunnel work already prompted Amtrak to reduce some of its trains between New York and Albany, which don’t even use the East River tubes but still take up space at Penn Station.
Amtrak President Roger Harris argued that MTA officials have so far supported the tunnel construction plan.
“MTA has approved the construction plans, designs and supported the application for funding for this project,” Harris wrote in a statement. He also blamed the MTA’s long-delayed Grand Central Madison project for pushing back the East River tunnel shutdown, noting the new terminal was needed to divert LIRR service while Amtrak closed the tube.
“Major construction work will still begin on May 9, after MTA delayed the work for more than seven months due to their lateness in completing work for their Eastbound Re-Route project,” Harris said, referring to Grand Central Madison-related track work and upgrades.
Amtrak officials criticized the MTA’s repairs to the L train tunnel, saying their own tunnel upgrades would last for more than 100 years.
The same Amtrak officials have also said there’s no way to fix the Sandy-damaged Hudson River rail tunnels on nights and weekends. Instead, the railroad plans to build a whole new under-river tunnel before repairing the old ones — a project that received the largest ever federal grant for a mass transit project.
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