Penn Station, LIRR impacted by end of Hudson rail tunnel

The future of Penn Station's transit operation became bleaker Wednesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie formally pulled the plug on the construction of another Hudson River tunnel that experts said would have alleviated crowded conditions that frequently overwhelm LIRR riders.

And those conditions may get even worse soon, transit advocates say, because the Moynihan Station project, which broke ground next door earlier this month, could complicate the flow of foot traffic in parts of Penn Station used mostly by LIRR customers.

Christie said his state could not afford likely cost overruns in the long-planned $8.7-billion Access to the Region's Core project, which would have built an additional NJ Transit train tunnel connecting New Jersey to a new annex station near Penn.

Pennsylvania Station is owned by Amtrak, which runs its operation in the facility and also leases space to the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. With only 21 tracks to share among the three rail carriers, disruptions on any one railroad can have major impacts on LIRR customers. That was illustrated Monday, when an NJ Transit derailment caused the LIRR to cancel 21 trains during the evening rush.

The LIRR recently reported that the number of its delays caused by Amtrak issues has climbed by 50 percent this year.

"Penn Station is a station that is extremely heavily used," MTA chairman Jay Walder said Wednesday. "And the difficulties that occur in any one part inevitably affect the other railroads as well."

"You're going to feel even more like a rat than you do now at Penn Station," said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who had counted on the ARC project to alleviate some of the pressure on Penn Station.

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years

According to the Regional Plan Association, just between 2003 and 2008, the number of people using Penn Station grew by 14 percent from 356,000 to 406,000.

"Obviously, Penn Station has turned into a significant bottleneck between Long Island Rail Road, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit," said MTA Board member Mitchell Pally, of Stony Brook. "And everybody keeps trying to fit more trains and more people into a very, very restricted area."

One project that could reduce the number of people traveling to Penn Station is the MTA's East Side Access plan, which will give the LIRR a second Manhattan terminal. But LIRR officials say they do not intend to run fewer trains to Penn Station, and that they also expect a significant spike in ridership when the project is completed in 2016.

Around the same time, state officials say they expect to complete work on the first phase of the Moynihan Station project. The project aims to move all of Amtrak's administrative operations out of Penn Station and into the nearby James Farley Post Office building. Construction during the first stage could make certain areas of Penn Station, including the West End Concourse, which will be expanded in the project, more congested, advocates say.

"I don't know what the Long Island Rail Road gets out of this," said Ira Greenberg, an MTA board member representing the LIRR Commuter Council. "It's the busiest station in the country by far and does not have the track capacity to do what it has to do. . . . A piecemeal renovation is probably not the way to go."

Timothy Gilchrist, president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, said the project has clear benefits for LIRR customers, including quicker clearing times of platforms through more escalators and more space in Penn when Amtrak moves out. The MTA is paying about $30 million of the first phase's $267 million budget.With the tunnel project apparently dead in the water, Gilchrist said the Moynihan project is all the more urgent.

"That means it's going to be longer before there's going to be any relief at Penn Station, and therefore it's more important that we move a portion of those customers across the street," he said.