Andy Byford, once New York City Transit’s “train daddy” and now Amtrak official charged with overseeing the Penn Station redesign, said on Wednesday that he needs to “fully come up to speed” on dire warnings about the Gateway Tunnel project.
Officials, including U.S. Sen Chuck Schumer (D-New York), warned on Tuesday that the Gateway project will come to a screeching halt if the Trump administration does not unfreeze federal funding for it by next Friday. The Gateway project directly impacts Penn Station, as it is replacing two 110-plus-year-old tunnels underneath the Hudson River that bring hundreds of Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains into the hub each day.
On Tuesday, Schumer and officials with the entity overseeing construction, the Gateway Development Commission, said that if the Trump administration does not free up the already allocated funds $12 billion it froze, work on the project will halt on Feb. 6. Worse yet, they said, the entire undertaking could be permanently derailed.
Trump’s Department of Transportation hit pause on the funding in early October, around when the last government shutdown began, under the pretense that it needed to review whether contractors on the project were in compliance with new rules around women- and minority-owned businesses. GDC has been certified in writing that it has implemented changes to comply with new federal rules, officials said.
While local officials said it is entirely up to Trump to unfreeze the funding, the White House instead claimed that it is actually Schumer and the Democrats standing in the way.
Despite those very public warnings, Byford, during a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast event on Jan. 28, said: “I’m aware of the sort of current talk of Gateway. I need to fully come up to speed with that.”
Byford also insisted that whatever the fate of the Gateway project is, the Penn Station renovation should still move forward.
“Penn Station, do nothing, is not an option,” Byford said. “The equipment is aging. The platforms are overcrowded. The signage is suboptimal. So we’ll see what pans out, but my project is, which is what I’m focused on, remains critical. We’ve got to get it done.”
However, Byford revealed few details about the project’s status. He noted that he could not go into the specifics of the process for choosing a vendor, or “master developer,” to lead the redesign — citing Amtrak’s procurement rules.
Byford, who previously served as New York City Transit president, was tapped to lead the redevelopment of Penn Station by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in May, after the feds took over the project from the state the previous month.
Officials warned on Tuesday that without the Gateway Project, the existing tunnels underneath the Hudson, especially the North River Tunnel, is “at real risk of shutting down.”
“This is not just an idle threat, this is not a drill, this is showtime,” Alicia Glen, the GDC’s New York commissioner and co-chair, said on Tuesday.
Glenn and others argued that if the tunnels shutting down as a result of not being replaced could deliver a major blow to both the regional and national economies, as the tunnels serve as a vital crossing for Amtrak’s northeast corridor between Boston and Washington D.C.
“If we don’t have a tunnel in service, then the fallout for our economy and our nation will be catastrophic,” she said of the tunnels.
