This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.<\/p>\n
Sign up<\/a> to get the full version, which includes answers to reader questions, trivia, service changes and more, in your inbox every Thursday.<\/p>\n Amtrak special adviser Andy Byford has a station to sell you.<\/p>\n Byford, once known to New Yorkers as \u201cTrain Daddy<\/a>,\u201d has spent the last month traveling up and down the East Coast seeking buy-in for the Trump administration\u2019s plan to rebuild Penn Station<\/a>. He\u2019s met with federal officials in Washington. He\u2019s gotten NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri to partner on the project. He presented the plan to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, as well as every elected official who represents the area around Penn Station.<\/p>\n But Byford hasn\u2019t managed to secure a meeting with one of Manhattan\u2019s most powerful figures: MTA Chair Janno Lieber.<\/p>\n The two are at odds over the project, which Lieber led until President Donald Trump seized control of the effort<\/a> last year and turned the work over to Amtrak. Byford wants the MTA to sign an agreement that would make the agency a partner (which hasn\u2019t been made public) before showing Lieber and his team the full scope of Amtrak\u2019s plans for the station.<\/p>\n Lieber has repeatedly declined to agree to the deal. By his telling, doing so would give up the leverage the MTA has over Penn Station through its lease.<\/p>\n Byford visited WNYC\u2019s newsroom on Wednesday for an appearance on \u201cThe Brian Lehrer Show<\/a>,\u201d where he called for an end to his standoff with Lieber and the MTA.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we just focus on the endgame, which is, we think we all want the same thing, right? For all of our customers, we want this to be a transformed station,\u201d said Byford. \u201cClearly there\u2019s got to be a bit of flexibility there and we\u2019ve had it in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that we can get common sense to prevail \u2026 Just work with us.\u201d<\/p>\n His remarks came a week after a public back-and-forth with Lieber. After Byford wrote a letter<\/a> asking Lieber to sign the MTA on as \u201cfully involved\u201d partners on the Penn Station plan, the New York transit executive responded with his own letter<\/a> that called Amtrak\u2019s process \u201cbizarre.\u201d Lieber wrote that \u201cthere\u2019s no point in rebutting all the blah-blah\u201d about Byford\u2019s previous efforts to get the MTA to sign on to the project.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously you have to have an agreement in order to talk about how you\u2019re going to work together. But that lease would not be impacted by the [memorandum of agreement] that we\u2019ve tabled,\u201d Byford said during his WNYC appearance. \u201cThere is a specific paragraph that safeguards that.\u201d<\/p>\n It still remains unclear why Amtrak needs a written agreement just to sit down with the MTA.<\/p>\n Lieber last week said he and his team had not yet been given a meeting to look at the design and engineering plans, even though Hochul \u2014 who controls the MTA \u2014 was already briefed on the top-line details.<\/p>\n State Sen. Liz Krueger said in an interview that Byford and the private developers behind the Penn Station project held a meeting last month with elected officials in Midtown, including City Councilmember Carl Wilson, Assemblymember Tony Simone, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and the chiefs of staff for both New York State Sen. Erik Bottcher and Rep. Jerry Nadler.<\/p>\n Krueger said they all raised similar concerns over how the project would be funded \u2014 and how much control private developers and the real estate firm Vornado would have over the reconstructed Penn Station.<\/p>\n Krueger pinned the MTA\u2019s reluctance to meet with Byford on Hochul.<\/p>\n \u201c[Amtrak] says Janno refuses to come to the table\u2026 I go, \u2018The MTA works for the governor. I\u2019m pretty sure the MTA isn\u2019t signing anything because the governor told them not to sign anything,\u2019 which, by the way, I still believe is true,\u201d Krueger said.<\/p>\n Byford is under the direction of the Trump administration to begin construction of the project by the end of 2027. Byford said he will move forward with or without MTA approval. And even if Amtrak secures funding and an expedited environmental review for the work, the New York transit agency could still sue Amtrak in an effort to shut it down.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Train Daddy is back in Manhattan \u2014 and plans to meet with elected officials every month while he tries to rebuild the country\u2019s busiest train station.<\/p>\n Jimmy Vielkind contributed reporting to this column.<\/p>\n The MTA rolls out new subway cars on the D line. MTA officials announced this week that they will begin rolling out modern subway cars on the D line, replacing breakdown-prone trains datin<\/a>g back to the 1980s<\/a>.<\/p>\n FAA investigates after JetBlue plane reports hitting drone near JFK. A JetBlue flight struck a drone while approaching JFK Airport on Monday morning, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which said it is investigating the incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n New York City\u2019s garbage plan moves forward. According to documents published this week, New York City\u2019s Department of Sanitation plans to replace nearly 30,000 parking spaces with \u201cEmpire Bin\u201d trash containers over the next six years in order to eradicate piles of trash bags from sidewalks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Curious Commuter<\/p>\n Have a question for us? Use this form<\/a> to submit yours and we may answer it in a future newsletter!<\/p>\n Question from Greg in Queens<\/p>\n How is New York City\u2019s transportation system holding up this summer with the World Cup in town?<\/p>\n Answer<\/p>\n The subways are on an international stage thanks to tourists from around the world coming to town for the World Cup games in New Jersey. And \u2014 knock on wood \u2014 we haven\u2019t seen the type of service meltdowns New Yorkers are used to. Last June and July, \u201cmajor incidents\u201d<\/a> \u2014 or ones that delay at least 50 trains \u2014 on the subways spiked to their highest levels since 2018. But data shows things are running a hell of a lot smoother this year. The MTA has invested billions in state-of-good-repair work to upgrade aging infrastructure responsible for many of last year\u2019s delays. But the transit agency should also thank the heavens. Last year, the city was hit by repeated rainstorms that flooded the subway system and damaged equipment. We haven\u2019t seen that type of weather so far this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-286362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286362","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=286362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}