NEW YORK — A Metropolitan Transportation Authority official says Amtrak demands have stalled a project that would give Metro-North commuters access to Manhattan’s West Side for the first time.
In an interview with the Rockland-Westchester Journal News, Janno Lieber, MTA’s chief development officer says negotiations between Amtrak and the MTA have broken down, delaying the start of bidding for designs of the Penn Station Access Project by at least six months.
The $1 billion MTA plan, which would follow completion of the long-delayed East Side Access project to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal, would allow some Metro-North New Haven Line trains to reach Penn Station via a new connection. It would also see four new stations built in the Bronx.
Amtrak, which owns much of the property on which the new line would be built, wants to collect access fees for the use of the Hell Gate Bridge, Lieber told the paper, and wants the MTA to pay much of the cost to replace a 111-year-old, Amtrak-owned bridge in the Bronx. Lieber has said that could cost $400 to $600 million.
“We are concerned that the commuter population, in New York State especially, is being held ransom for some unreasonable demands,” Lieber told the paper.
Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said in a statement that the passenger railroad has been cooperating with the MTA efforts, but wants “to ensure that the proposed expansion of Metro-North service does not adversely impact Amtrak intercity passenger operation, which will see a significant expansion in 2021 with the introduction of expanded Acela service between New York and Boston.”
The full Journal News article is available here.
