Response from Liam Blank to Eugene Sinigalliano’s

A Block 780 Resident Reacts to the FRA’s Recent Takeover at Penn Station

(ChelseaCommunityNews.com / Guest Opinion: May 4, 2025)

BY LIAM BLANK | As author of 2022’s From Here to There: Regional Rail for Metro New York (published during my tenure at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign) and current Transportation Committee Chair at The City Club of New York, I feel compelled to respond to Mr. Sinigalliano’s characterization of our position regarding Block 780. 

First, I want to be explicitly clear: I remain steadfastly committed to implementing through-running at Penn Station. Since leaving Tri-State in December 2022, I’ve continued this advocacy through my role at The City Club of New York, where we firmly believe through-running represents the most efficient, equitable, and forward-thinking solution for our region’s rail network. 

Mr. Sinigalliano has mischaracterized the Tri-State Solution proposed in our 2022 report. The report specifically conditioned the Tri-State Solution on only being necessary if through-running within the existing station footprint proved infeasible. The statement from page 27 reads: 

“If it’s proven that through-running can’t be done without first expanding Penn Station, TSTC proposes the Tri-State Solution, an alternative scheme that will achieve through-running on a shorter timeline without disrupting Penn’s daily operations.” 

The Tri-State Solution was explicitly designed to minimize neighborhood disruption. The concepts for its minor southern expansion drew from detailed engineering studies, such as NJ Transit’s Penn Station Capacity Improvements Project (PCIP) Final Report (January 2020). That report, exploring alternatives like its “Alt 12,” indicated that any necessary new platform and tracks would impact the “northern portion of Block 780” (PCIP, page 63) and explicitly stated that for significant structures, including the St. John the Baptist Church, “underpinning these buildings could be considered in lieu of demolition” (PCIP, page 101). 

This technically grounded approach—targeting only the northern fringe with a preference for underpinning and preservation—is what informed our proposal and stands in stark contrast to the wholesale demolition of Block 780 implied by Mr. Sinigalliano or the impacts of the much larger “Penn Expansion” (formerly “Penn South”). Our 2022 report emphasized this commitment to minimal impact on page 30: 

“This new approach will minimize neighborhood disruption, modernize the station’s tracks and platforms, reduce train delays, improve rider safety, and address the primary concerns of riders, advocates, and the railroads.”

Mr. Sinigalliano is absolutely correct that an independent, thorough evaluation of through-running alternatives within the existing station footprint is needed before any demolition decisions are contemplated. I’ve consistently advocated for this very approach. Our report, in fact, emphasized that through-running should be implemented “expeditiously.” 

I believe there’s more common ground here than Mr. Sinigalliano suggests. Both the community and transportation advocates should unite behind:

—Demanding a comprehensive, independent evaluation of through-running within Penn Station’s existing footprint.

—Rejecting oversized expansion proposals that unnecessarily threaten viable neighborhoods.

—Advancing solutions that prioritize both transit efficiency and meticulous, fact-based neighborhood preservation strategies. 

We can achieve world-class regional rail without sacrificing our communities. That has been my position since authoring the report, and it remains my position today. 

Liam Blank is the Transportation Committee Chair at The City Club of New York. He authored the As author of 2022’s “From Here to There: Regional Rail for Metro New York” report in June 2022 during his tenure as Policy & Communications Manager at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The views expressed in this Opinion piece are his own.

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

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