Big Changes in Texas and New York

This week, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced major shifts in direction for two important projects.

As advocates for quality trains, we need to speak up for the changes we want to see.

Amtrak out at Texas Central

On Tuesday, Sec. Duffy announced that Amtrak will no longer be involved in the Texas high-speed rail project. He also rescinded funding previously awarded to Amtrak to refresh the already approved Environmental Impact Statement.

Sec. Duffy explained that private investors should finance high-speed rail projects like this. And, indeed, a private investor stepped forward to claim control. However, neither USDOT nor the investor has explained how the project will move forward.

Keep in mind that the very costly expansion of the parallel I-45 will be paid for, in large part, through a statewide sales tax and federal deficit spending.

Amtrak now controls Penn Station NY expansion

On Thursday, Sec. Duffy rescinded the grant previously awarded to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority for expanding Penn Station. Instead, project management will be consolidated under Amtrak. The project had been split, with MTA responsible for upgrading the existing station and Amtrak focused on building a new one, called “Penn Station South.”

Again, there is little clarity on how the project will move forward. It appears, for now, that Penn Station South is off the table. Moving Madison Square Garden might be back on the table.

There are two essential components to making Penn Station work right:

1. A unified train design that can operate on all of the legacy electrification and signaling systems on the multiple connecting railroads.
2. Reconfigured platforms, which will require removing Madison Square Garden.

Amtrak, the MTA, and New Jersey Transit have opposed these components so far. Hopefully, they will receive serious attention moving forward.

Previously, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told President Trump that Amtrak was the source of delays that have hamstrung the project for years. Trump responded that he was “working on Amtrak.”

Reactions to the move have been mixed. A Trump donor, Thomas Klingenstein, wrote an essay in March that called for building a new Madison Square Garden, east of 7^th Avenue, which will free up space “for an above ground towering train hall, larger than Grand Central Station, modeled after the original Penn Station.” Directly below the station would be more than 600,000 square feet of boarding platforms. The estimated cost would be $7.5 billion.

Whether (and to what extent) Amtrak will draw on this plan remains to be seen. And some observers doubt Amtrak’s capacity to complete the project on its own. New York Assemblyman Tony Simone, for example, said that he was “beyond skeptical that this federal government can manage a project of this size by seizing control while simultaneously slashing funding.”

For her part, Gov. Hochul semi-sarcastically thanked Trump and Duffy for “taking on the sole responsibility to deliver the $7 billion station that New Yorkers deserve.” For several months, Hochul said, she had “requested that the federal government fund the long-overdue overhaul of Penn Station. Clearly that effort has been successful.” As The Gothamist observed, the move takes the final responsibility and the financial burden for the project “off New York’s plate and puts it squarely in Trump’s lap.”

The Alliance will continue to follow and report on these evolving stories over the coming months.

All we can say with certainty, for the moment, is that US passenger-rail policy had been stuck for decades. But now, change is happening quickly. This is true not just in New York and Texas but across America.

We can’t know how things will evolve or what the outcome will be. But we do know that when things are unsettled and in flux, there are good opportunities to shape the emerging realities. As we often say: Change happens when change happens. It snowballs, breaks through old barriers, and opens up new possibilities.

Which means that now, more than ever, we need to be engaged, make our voices heard, and push hard for the kind of changes we want to see.

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