Amtrak: Worse damage to East River tunnels revealed, backs repair approach to key LIRR routes

Repairs to the East River tunnels revealed worse damage than expected, Amtrak said Wednesday, vindicating its decision to take two of the four tunnels out of service for more than a year at a time.

In May of last year, Amtrak began work on a long-delayed plan to rebuild the tunnels connecting to Penn Station after Superstorm Sandy flooded them with corrosive saltwater in 2012. The first of the tunnels to be repaired, known as Line 2, is expected to return to service in August. In October, Line 1 will be shut down for another 13 months for similar repairs, according to Laura Mason, Amtrak's executive vice president of capital delivery, who briefed reporters Wednesday on the project's progress.

The decision to keep each of the tunnels out of service during the repairs was a point of contention between Amtrak, which owns the structures, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the parent organization of the Long Island Rail Road, which runs most of the trains that use the tunnels.

To limit the potential impact on service, the MTA implored Amtrak to limit the scope of repairs, including by not demolishing and rebuilding concrete "bench walls" on the sides of the tunnels that encase electrical wires. Such a method could have allowed the tunnels to remain in service during critical weekday rush hours, MTA officials have said.

Amtrak, however, has maintained that a full-time shutdown of the tunnels was necessary to do the job right. Halfway through the project, Mason said Amtrak was proved right.

"Going through this outage, I think we have been assured that we made the right decision," said Mason, who noted that the demolition undertaken in the tunnels revealed several unknown issues, including "voids" in concrete structures and drainage systems that were "completely blocked up and unusable."

MTA officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mason said the tunnels remain safe and structurally sound. But, she said, the full-time closure is allowing Amtrak to ensure the tunnels, built in 1910, will last another 100 years.

"To do this on nights and weekends would have meant that every Friday night we would be ... doing a little bit of that demo work, maybe trying to run some cables, and spending much of Sunday afternoon and night putting in temporary measures to make it safe to run service the next day, and then repeat all of that again the next Friday," Mason said.

Despite criticism from MTA officials about the tunnel outages compounding the impact of other service disruptions in recent months, Mason noted the LIRR has maintained its on-time performance goals for most of the time the work has been going on.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso 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.