{"id":47991,"date":"2025-11-21T23:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T23:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/47991\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T23:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T23:17:09","slug":"long-island-rail-road-must-cut-service-for-proposed-bronx-metro-north-plan-amtrak-tells-mta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/47991\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Island Rail Road must cut service for proposed Bronx Metro-North plan, Amtrak tells MTA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long Island Rail Road service would have to be cut to accommodate an MTA plan to link\u00a0three new Bronx Metro-North stations to Penn Station by 2027, according to Amtrak.<\/p>\n

But the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority this week called the idea\u00a0\u2014 which follows\u00a0project delays the agency has blamed on Amtrak\u00a0\u2014 a “non-starter.”<\/p>\n

In October, the MTA said<\/a> that its $2.9 billion Penn Station Access project had\u00a0fallen at least three years behind schedule.<\/p>\n

The project\u00a0aims to link Metro-North’s New Haven line to the LIRR’s longtime Manhattan home, Penn Station, and also open three new stations in the Bronx at\u00a0Co-Op City, Morris Park and Parkchester.\u00a0Originally scheduled to be completed by 2027, the MTA said the\u00a0project won’t be done until 2030 at the earliest, and could possibly stretch into 2032.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The MTA has said the delay is\u00a0because Amtrak \u2014 which\u00a0owns and maintains much of the infrastructure involved in the project, including Penn Station and the adjoining tunnels\u00a0\u2014 has not provided the promised level of access to its tracks or workforce. Amtrak has disputed this, pointing the finger at\u00a0the MTA and its hired contractors.<\/p>\n

To mitigate the pain of the delays, the MTA has proposed launching some Metro-North service to the three new Bronx stations by 2027, using temporary station platforms. But in a Nov. 12 letter to MTA officials, Amtrak vice president\u00a0Laura Mason said “any new Metro-North service must also be accompanied by a reduction in Long Island Rail Road service levels”\u00a0into Penn.<\/p>\n

Amtrak\u00a0is in the midst of ongoing repairs to superstorm Sandy damage<\/a> inside two of the four East River tunnels linking to Penn. The work is expected\u00a0to keep one tunnel out of service through 2027 at the earliest. Amtrak has already scaled back its service into and out of Penn while the work is going on.<\/p>\n

Once the tunnel work is complete, there should be enough capacity for Metro-North to run into and out of Penn without the LIRR having to give up any of its “slots” at the station, Amtrak officials have said.<\/p>\n

In the interim, any additional Metro-North service to Penn must\u00a0“not impact Amtrak or NJ Transit service” \u2014 meaning the MTA would have to make up for it with fewer LIRR trains, Mason wrote.<\/p>\n

But talking to reporters following an MTA board meeting Wednesday, authority chairman and chief executive Janno Lieber suggested Amtrak’s proposal was dead on arrival.<\/p>\n

“Amtrak has said, in principal, they’re interested in discussing starting service. But they’ve made it contingent on a reduction in Long Island Rail Road service, which is a non-starter,”\u00a0said Lieber, adding that he believes Amtrak’s infrastructure should be able to accommodate three additional Metro-North trains per hour without the LIRR having to give up any of its trains.<\/p>\n

The disagreement is the latest spat in a larger feud between Amtrak and the MTA.<\/p>\n

The transit authority has blamed Amtrak for years of delays in its East Side Access megaproject, which brought the LIRR to Grand Central. The MTA also criticized Amtrak’s East River Tunnel repair strategy, arguing that the fixes should have been limited to overnight hours and weekends, allowing all four tunnels to remain in service during the critical weekday rush hours.<\/p>\n

And in April, the Trump administration took over control<\/a> of a multibillion-dollar redevelopment of Penn Station that\u00a0had been led by the MTA and handed it to Amtrak to oversee.<\/p>\n

Gerard Bringmann, chairman of the Long Island Rail Road Commuter Council, a rider advocacy group, said Amtrak’s condition that the LIRR scale back service in order for Metro-North to add service is “a big\u00a0red flag,” especially if the project delays continue.<\/p>\n

“My opinion is that Amtrak is not going to meet their schedule of completing the East River Tunnel work in time for Penn Access to start on time,” Bringmann said. “If only three tunnels are available, then we wouldn’t be able to accommodate the additional traffic Metro-North would bring.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Alfonso<\/p>\n

\n\tAlfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Island Rail Road service would have to be cut to accommodate an MTA plan to link\u00a0three new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130,608],"class_list":["post-47991","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","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47991","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=47991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}