On April 17, 2025, the Federal Rail Administration (FRA)  and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that it would be recasting plans known as the Penn Expansion (the addition of a NJ Transit station south of Penn Station being the preferred route) and Penn Reconstruction (the above ground station) to a project to be led by Amtrak (with newly constituted senior management)and driven by the federal government. The announcement was not a complete surprise, as the FRA made clear as early as January that it would be taking a more pronounced role in resolving the Penn Station conundrum. While much remains to be clarified this signals a greatly reduced role at the top of the leadership ranks for the MTA and NJ Transit. 

BY SAM TURVEY (Chairperson, ReThinkNYC; Coordinator, Empire Station Coalition; Coordinator, Penn Community Defense Fund) | The FRA and DOT are stepping into a train wreck. We are cautiously optimistic that they can improve things and hope to aid the effort. The Gateway Tunnels should be leveraged to allow for the implementation of unified regional rail via through-running in New York as is happening or has long ago happened in countless of our peer cities.

We do not need to level a neighborhood to add capacity at Penn Station, spend a fortune on a deep cavern station to the south of today’s station or incrementally improve an abysmal above ground station. The FRA apparently gets this and are asserting ownership and the beginnings of a geometric management model instead of the Six Characters in Search of an Author-type chaos we have been dealing with for years. 

The Railroads’ yearslong effort to discredit through-running and defer New York’s once-in-a-century opportunity until the 22nd Century – even as many of our peer cities are already enjoying through-running’s benefits – has only served to further compound the tragedy that started at Penn Station in 1963 and continues to the present. Their repeated resorts to chimera and hoax and technocratic whack-a-mole games can’t end soon enough. This has all gone on while through-running at Penn Station is clearly the superior, faster, better, and cheaper option.

We have the opportunity to reverse this continuing tragedy at New York’s most important crossroads and set Penn Station and metropolitan New York on a better course for the 21st century and the 22nd.  It starts with through-running at Penn Station – sooner rather than later – and capping the revamped track layout with a station building worthy of what many of us still consider the greatest city on earth. 

The public interest demands a bona fide independent review of through-running at Penn Station. The public also deserves a seat at the table in a design competition for a new station (which Governor Hochul promised in 2023). Finally, a governance pilot should be implemented to prototype a management vehicle which will help us avoid such calamity in the future.

We hope the FRA/DOT and newly constituted Amtrak management will take us up on these recommendations and help us get to a Penn Station for the balance of the 21st Century and beyond.

NOTE: The views expressed by our Guest Opinion writers are not necessarily those of Chelsea Community News.

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