MTA brass, NY pols call on Amtrak to change E. River tunnel plan amid fears of LIRR delays
The East River Tunnel — a century-old set of four tubes that carry trains between Penn Station and Queens — has been in need of an overhaul since 2012's Superstorm Sandy, when an incursion of salt water into two tubes threatened to corrode the wiring and infrastructure within.
Amtrak, the federal railroad which owns and maintains the tracks, intends to shut down each damaged tube for 13 months apiece in order to repair them — a plan that leaders at the Long Island Rail Road say could wreak havoc on service.
'Amtrak owns the infrastructure, but the Long Island Rail Road is by far the biggest user, with approximately 461 trains a day using the East River Tunnels,' LIRR president Rob Free said Wednesday.
The tunnel is also used by Amtrak passenger trains headed toward Boston via the Hell Gate line, as well as by NJ Transit trains that continue on from Penn Station without passengers each morning in order to wait in Queens at the Sunnyside Yards for the afternoon rush back to the Garden State.
Under Amtrak's plan, trains from all three railroads will have to compete for slots in just three tubes while the work to repair either of the damaged tubes is underway.
'With the tunnel closure, trains will be operating very close together for most of the rush hour period, which leaves little to no room for error,' Free said. 'The slightest deviation could have significant impacts to our operations reliability, including possible shutdowns of service depending on the issue.'
In an April 9 letter from Free to Amtrak's executive vice president Gerhard Williams, the LIRR boss said any incident or outage affecting a second tunnel during the rebuilding project could be 'catastrophic' to LIRR service.
'While we are all uneasy with the planned reduction of capacity due to the tunnel outage,' Free wrote, 'we are even more concerned given the recent increase of infrastructure incidents that have impacted operations.'
Free said the MTA would be positioning additional crews to respond to any power or signaling outages during the project, and asked Amtrak to commit to the same.
An Amtrak source told the Daily News that the railroad had its own protocols in place, including the normal complement of rescue trains in Queens and New Jersey capable of removing a disabled train from the tunnel.
MTA officials Wednesday called on Amtrak to reconsider their plan — which would require the wholesale replacement of wires for traction power and signaling as well as structural components like tracks and bench-walls — and opt for a method that would close the tunnel on nights and weekends to replace wiring components, but leave some structural portions in place.
A similar solution averted the MTA's planned 15-month shutdown of the L train's Canarsie line tunnel — also flooded by Hurricane Sandy — in 2019.
In a Monday letter, Gov. Hochul called on Amtrak to consider a similar 'repair-in-place' option that would allow all four tubes of the tunnel to run trains during the workday.
But the MTA also garnered support from unlikely quarters this week, with GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, a congestion pricing foe, calling on President Trump and his transportation secretary Sean Duffy to 'step in and force' Amtrak to adopt a plan that would keep the tunnel fully operational during weekdays.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman also called on Duffy to intervene this week, holding up the L train reconstruction as a model.
'When the governor and the county executive of Nassau are on the same page, that's a special occasion,' MTA chairman Janno Lieber quipped Wednesday.
But in a statement Wednesday, Amtrak president Roger Harris said a 'repair-in-place' plan had been evaluated, but didn't fit the bill.
'[T]he plan we are implementing proved to be the safest, most efficient, reliable, and timely to complete the full rehabilitation of East River Tunnel, making it the best use of taxpayer investments,' he said.
East River Tunnel's Tube No. 1 is set to be taken out of service on May 9 for a week of prep work. Tube No. 1 will then be put back into service while Tube No. 2 is closed for similar work. By mid-May, according to Amtrak's plan, Tube No. 2 will be closed for major construction set to last until 2026.
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