The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New Jersey Transit shelved a $3 billion plan to boost the number of trains running through Penn Station in favor of a pricy $13 billion expansion of the decrepit transit hub — in part, to avoid working together, The Post has learned.
Officials at the MTA and NJT say they rejected the cheaper option because it fails to meet the capacity targets outlined in a federal 2017 environmental impact assessment of upgrades to the Northeast Corridor: It calls for 52 trains per hour to fit under the Hudson.
But, the plan favored by the railroads to add a new wing to Penn Station with eight tracks would also fail to meet that standard, an examination of hundreds of pages of documents shows.
Stunned transit experts said it appeared the railroads favored the expansion because it would allow them to maintain their fiefdoms and avoid further integrating their Penn Station operations.
“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Yonah Freemark, a top researcher and expert on transit projects at the Urban Institute in Washington D.C.
“The folks in New Jersey and in New York State want to have their own independent operations at Penn above all else,” he added. “And when that’s the top priority above all else, you’re sacrificing the quality of the system and the customer experience.”
Finding ways to fit more trains into Penn is crucial as construction is set to begin on the new Hudson River rail tunnel, which will eventually double the number of tracks linking the Empire and Garden States.
The 43-page ‘Through-Running’ report commissioned by the MTA and obtained by appeal under the Freedom of Information Law contains a three-prong proposal to boost efficiency and squeeze every ounce of capacity out of the existing Penn complex:
It would boost the current maximum number of trains that can fit through Penn and under the Hudson River by 20%-45%, from 24 trains per hour to as many as 35, according to documents and interviews.
It adds up fast: Commuter trains can carry 1,000 people, so 11 more every hour would pump another 200,000 more seats through Penn Station daily. That’s enough to fit every driver using the Lincoln and Holland tunnels combined.
The white paper estimated the project would take four years to design and build, meaning the work could be wrapped up long before the new Hudson River tunnel is finished in 2035. And, it would not block the railroads from adding more tracks to Penn Station if needed in the future.
The expansion project proposed by the railroads would be similar in size and scale to the new $11 billion terminal built beneath Grand Central for the Long Island Rail Road, which took two decades to complete and ended up costing three times more than originally budgeted.
“People say, ‘Hey, Penn expansion’ or ‘Why do you need so many trains?’” said Kevin Corbett, the chief executive of NJT, describing the through-running white paper as a “nice exercise.”
“You build these projects once every couple of hundred years,” he added. “Over the next 20 years, much less the next 50 or 100 years, the doubling of capacity for west-of-Hudson — for me — I have no doubt is going to be a sound investment.”
The MTA did not dispute the assessment but said the review is ongoing.
“The MTA is committed to a Penn Station that addresses the transportation capacity needs of the region at the best possible value,” said MTA spokesman John McCarthy in a statement.