{"id":245034,"date":"2026-05-27T12:20:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/245034\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:20:24","slug":"federal-judge-throws-out-amtrak-injunction-request-in-metro-north-track-access-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/245034\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge throws out Amtrak injunction request in Metro-North track access dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge dealt Amtrak a major legal setback on Friday by denying its request for a temporary order<\/a>\u00a0that would have forced Metro-North Railroad to once again allow it to use tracks they share for non-passenger train movements.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed Amtrak\u2019s plea for the court to force Metro-North, which is part of the MTA, to give the federal rail service access to its tracks to run trains not carrying passengers in the Bronx, upstate, and Connecticut while its suit, filed last month, plays out.<\/p>\n

Rakoff\u2019s decision came a day after he heard oral arguments on May 21. He said he would file an opinion explaining his ruling at a later date.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon careful consideration of the briefs, the supportive declarations, and the arguments of counsel, the court hereby denies the petition,\u201d he wrote.\n<\/p>\n

In response to the ruling, MTA spokesperson Aaron Donovan said: \u201cWe are pleased that the Court denied Amtrak\u2019s petition for an injunction.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In their suit, Amtrak\u2019s attorneys argue the MTA\u2019s move to deny it access to tracks on both the New Haven Line (between New Rochelle in Westchester and New Haven, CT) and the Hudson Line (between New York City and Poughkeepsie) has already forced it to \u201ccancel and delay passenger train runs.\u201d It contends it has guaranteed access to both sections of track under its decades-old \u201cHudson Agreement\u201d and \u201cNew Haven Agreement\u201d with Metro-North.<\/p>\n

\"Metro-NorthCommuters on a Metro-North Railroad platform at Grand Central Station on March 11, 2025.Marc A. Hermann \/ MTA<\/p>\n

Specifically, the agency says it has not been able to run \u201ctrack geometry\u201d cars, which monitor track conditions; test new \u201cNextGen\u201d Acela trains; and reposition its equipment for inspection and maintenance<\/p>\n

In a statement, Amtrak said it will press forward with its case despite the setback.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cFriday\u2019s ruling was preliminary,\u201d the agency said. \u201cWe will move forward with this case to ensure our customers receive the safety and reliability of our service they deserve and that Metro-North is putting at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amtrak\u2019s lawyers claim the MTA\u2019s actions were retaliation for overhead wires that one of its new Acela trains allegedly damaged on the New Haven Line.\n<\/p>\n

In legal filings, the MTA\u2019s attorneys offered a different version of events.\n<\/p>\n

They contended that the agency only began denying Amtrak access to its tracks after five incidents where Metro North trains\u2019 \u201cpantographs,\u201d which allow them to draw power from overhead lines,\u201d detached from the wires. In all of those instances, the MTA deployed crews to reattach the pantographs, and in two of them, they had to repair damaged overhead lines.<\/p>\n

The MTA says it requested compensation for damages from Amtrak when the agency asked to run another Acela test in March, according to legal filings. Amtrak did not agree and filed its suit instead, they claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cMetro-North is committed to keeping customers safe and protecting our vital infrastructure, and it is entirely appropriate for Metro-North to require Amtrak to agree to accept responsibility for any damage their trains may cause to the Metro-North network,\u201d Donovan said in his statement.<\/p>\n

When Amtrak first filed its suit, top MTA officials charged that the move was intended to distract from a separate dispute between the two agencies over a section of track owned by the feds, but used by both rail services, in the eastern Bronx.<\/p>\n

The tiff concerns the Penn Access project,<\/a> which involves building four new Metro-North stations on the section of track in question\u2014 known as the Hell Gate Line. The undertaking is aimed at bringing north-south rail service to an underserved section of the Bronx \u2014 where trains pass through, but don\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

MTA officials say that Amtrak has gone back on its agreement with the transit authority, by not providing it the service outages it says are needed for constructing the new stations. The agency has delayed the project, pushing back its projected completion to 2030<\/a> at the earliest, citing the delays it says the lack of access has caused.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not clear who in the federal government is directing Amtrak\u2019s lawyers to create distractions from the real issue\u2014getting Bronxites the service they deserve,\u201d said John McCarthy, the MTA\u2019s external relations head, at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of the Bronx have been waiting generations, watching trains blow by without stopping. We have a project that will change that and improve lives for people in the Bronx,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge dealt Amtrak a major legal setback on Friday by denying its request for a temporary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[6922,98,100,99,95635,72163,6920,8296,141,95636,9,24,63,95637,95638],"class_list":["post-245034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-amtrak","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-hell-gate-line","tag-hudson-line","tag-john-mccarthy","tag-metro-north","tag-mta","tag-new-haven-line","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-penn-access","tag-u-s-district-judge-jed-rakoff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}