NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will miss its self-imposed deadline to begin Long Island Rail Road service to its new station beneath Grand Central Terminal by the end of 2022, the agency has conceded.
NY1 reports that opening of the Grand Central Madison station — which will mark completion of the long-delayed and well-over-budget East Side Access project — will not happen until sometime in 2023.
Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction and Development, said in a statement, “One particular zone in the 700,000-square-foot terminal requires additional work that will take more than a few days. … Given the logistics of concluding testing and launching service, we have advised MTA Chair Janno Lieber that the terminal will not open this week.” The MTA will work with the Federal Railroad Administration to begin service as soon as possible in January, according to the statement.
The MTA has targeted 2022 for the start of service since at least 2015; officials continued to say the opening would come this year during a series of November interviews for an upcoming Trains Magazine feature, while not specifying a date. As recently as Dec. 19, the agency announced plans for a shuttle service between Grand Central Madison and the Jamaica station in Queens that could have allowed a limited opening this year, even as it pushed the start of full operations into 2023 [see “LIRR to begin Grand Central Madison operations with shuttle service …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 20, 2022]
When the full service begins, the LIRR will expand weekday service by 274 trains per day, with Manhattan service split 55%-45% between current terminus Penn Station and the new Grand Central facility. It will also bring completion to an $11.2 billion project that was once slated to begin service in 2009.
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