After years of neglect, New York City faces transit crisis this summer
By
Alan Whyte
2 June 2017
New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has warned the federal railroad Amtrak’s emergency repair work at Pennsylvania Station in midtown Manhattan will “create a summer of hell” for commuters in New York City.
The work, desperately needed after years of neglect and decay, could reduce service on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) by as much as 20 percent during rush hours in July and August. This would force many LIRR commuters to use cars instead, turning the Long Island Expressway “into a parking lot” of backed up cars stuck in traffic, Cuomo said.
The service cutbacks and delays would hit New Jersey Transit and Amtrak even harder than the LIRR, according to Mike Decataldo, vice president of operations of Amtrak’s Eastern Region.
This proposed work is a result of the rapidly deteriorating conditions at Penn station—the main intercity railway terminal in New York City—which was highlighted by two recent train derailments.
On April 3, a derailment took eight tracks out of service, creating four days of huge delays. Investigators blamed the incident on weak wooden cross-ties beneath a track. An earlier derailment on March 24 was due to a mismatched rail joint. In addition, the station has been plagued by a host of problems such as power failures and signal troubles.
Penn station is owned and has been operated by the federally-funded Amtrak railroad system for the last 40 years, and it serves about 600,000 daily commuters.
Cuomo has sought to use the crisis to accelerate the privatization of Penn Station. On May 21, the governor asked President Donald Trump to provide increased federal support to repair the station and bring in a private company to replace Amtrak as…