Penn Station: Full Steam Ahead but Any Plan to Bulldoze Block to the South on Hold–for Now

The physical expansion of Penn Station, which could require the destruction of the block immediately to the south, is “absolutely on hold” while the Trump administration conducts a detailed study of increasing the station’s capacity within its present footprint.That announcement, welcomed by advocates for the neighborhood, was made byAndy Byford, the recently appointed head of the Trump administration’s project to transform the station.

“I think it's only right that, initially, what we should do is look to see how we could use this station more efficiently,” Byford said. “There's 21 tracks. There's definitely efficiencies that we can squeeze more trains per hour out if we use the station more efficiently.”

Byford spoke at a news conference with the US secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, where the two announced their aggressive timeline for transforming the station, a project Duffy took over by ousting the MTA and putting Amtrak, the station’s owner, in sole command.

“We are going to move at the speed of Trump,” Duffy said.They said they expected to have construction underway by the end of 2027. Between now and then, Duffy and Byford said they would select a “master developer,” essentially a private company that would partner with the government to design and finance the rebuilding of the station.

This form of public-private partnership, or P3, has been used successfully to rebuild several American airports, including LaGuardia, and by Amtrak itself to rebuildPennsylvania Station in Philadelphia. Essentially, under a P3 the private-sector master developer is more than just a construction contractor. For example, Halmar International, the US subsidiary of the Italian developer ASTM, has already proffered a proposal to finance the station’s reconstruction in exchange for fees to manage the new building for many years to come.

After the Duffy-Byford press conference, a second group, the Grand Penn Community Alliance, announced that it, too, would bid to be the master developer. “Yes, absolutely we will be competing,” said Alexandros Washburn, the GPCA’s chief architect. “It will be a complete Master Developer team, can’t give away too much right now! It will be a very strong team with the focus on delivering.”

Halmar has generally been considered the front runner, both for its deep corporate pockets and detailed analysis of Penn Station (done in cooperation with Madison Square Garden, which sits atop the station). But Grand Penn got a major boost in recent days when a group of Korean industrialists, urged on by the Trump administration as part of trade negotiations, offered to invest billions in the GPCA’s Penn Station proposal. The Koreans made the offer to one of GPCA’s prime benefactors, Tom Klingenstein, a philanthropist, Trump campaign contributor, and advocate for classical architecture of the sort the GPCA plans for a restored Penn Station.

“We spent the last few years studying the current footprint, listening to the railroads, and talking to Madison Square Garden and other key stakeholders,” Washburn said. “We believe our Grand Penn plan strikes the right balance of creating public space, delivering a world-class transit, and facilitating a move one block east for Madison Square Garden. It’s a win for commuters, a win for New Yorkers, a win for taxpayers, a win for the Garden, and a win for all.”

Who else will compete for the master-developer role is not known. Byford suggested his own former employer, the MTA, where he was head of subways and buses, could compete, using the extensive design work it did to develop a construction plan before Duffy bounced them off the project.

The architect Richard Cameron, who has developed various classic treatments for a new station, is also said to be pulling together a consortium to bid to be master developer. ReThinkNYC, which worked closely with Cameron, has also campaigned vigorously for more attention to how the station operates at train level, to head off the need to expand the station by destroying the city block to the south, known as block 780.

Byford strongly embraced that thinking. He said that while he was considering candidates for master developer, “The Federal Railroad Administration will begin a service-optimization study to evaluate ways to safely accommodate passenger growth throughout the tri-state region and to maximize train capacity within the confines of the existing station footprint.”

The outcome of that study will then be included in instructions to the master developer for changes at track level. However, neither Byford nor the master developer controls two important players who will be essential to any changes to optimize operations at the station: the two commuter railroads that use the station.

While Amtrak owns the station, its biggest users are the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. Both Amtrak and NJ Transit say they want to substantially increase service to Penn Station when two new tunnels under the Hudson are completed in the 2030s. Byford said he was in close touch with both the builders of those tunnels and the commuter railroads and that the operations of the station were as important as the aesthetics.

“I think we're selling New Yorkers short if, in the future, they turn up and they're wowed by a beautiful new station head house,” Byford said. “But then they get to the bottom and they think, Did they run out of money? It's still the same dark, gloomy, boiling hot, narrow, and cramped situation that we currently have today. So I think it's really important that we look to maximize the existing capacity first, before we even think about expanding in the future.”

Local adovicates celebrated Byford’s comments. “Perfect,” said Layla Law-Gisiko, president of the City Club, who hugged Byford after he completed the press conference.

“The Penn Station project is a good candidate for a public-private partnership,” she said. “As long as the chosen partner is financially sound, delivers quality work, and charges a fair price, the model makes sense. The advantage of a P3 is clear: If the project runs over time or over budget, the private partner—not the public—absorbs the cost.”

On one key question, whether Madison Square Garden should be moved, Byford said he would consider plans that moved it and left it in place. He said he had spoken to the owner, James Dolan, and noted that Dolan had recently invested a billion dollars in modernizing the arena, first built after the original Penn Station was demolished in the 1960s. But he also noted that Dolan recognizes that the current Penn Station is inadequate. Dolan himself has noted how important transit access is to the success of the Garden.

“Now, everyone likes to talk about the design of the new station, and that's the fun part,” Byford said. “I like that fun, right? Looking at the renderings, figuring out what the station might look like in the future. But the transformation of Penn Station must be much more than bricks and mortar. It must be about making the station operationally sound, safe, clean, and easy to navigate. And I want, in the future, this station to ooze excellence in every form. I want every interaction with customers to be consistently excellent.”

The Duffy-Byford news conference was conducted in the cramped and now unused taxiway on the eastern edge of Penn Station. The DOT media team apparently selected the site to dramatize the dilapidated entrance to the station. But also visible was the endangered block 780, with Tracks, the bar, and a parking garage easily visible through the taxiway.

Duffy and Byford repeatedly thanked and praised President Trump.

But secretary Duffy demurred when asked if the station, now named for a defunct railroad, should be renamed.

“We’re not we’re not here to announce the name change,” Duffy replied. “We’re here to announce a great project and a great build. I imagine you’re asking, Is this going to be Trump station? I think that has a nice ring to it. But listen, we’re all we’re all working on building this project and getting it done. If you want to have a conversation about name changes, that’s a conversation that could happen at some other point. We want to get this bill off the ground and get this moving for New York.”

Byford effectively shelved a study that Amtrak itself and the two commuter railroads had conducted, which concluded that expansion was needed because Penn Station could not handle within its existing footprint the doubling of service the railroads say is needed by the 2030s.

Others, like Samuel Turvey, chair of ReThink NYC, had accused the railroads of ignoring the potential benefits of what Byford spoke so positively about, reforming operations to run loaded trains through Penn Station, rather than unloading all passengers at the station.

Only Amtrak currently runs loaded trains through the station to destinations on either side.

“Andy Byford is showing the right approach to the through-running question,” said Turvey. “Through running is the gold standard in commuter rail and would confer superior ridership benefits and transformative economic benefits, including positive impacts to the region’s housing and affordability crises. . . . He is right to be open to it where others haven’t.

“We look to him to work with the [Federal Railroad Administration], who is charged with fairly reviewing the prospects for through running, which absolutely has not happened to date. We anticipate through running coming out of this as the optimum alternative to best leverage all the billions of public dollars which will be spent on this and the Gateway Tunnels project. It is a win-win, and Andy Byford is the right person to help all of us recognize that and move the entire region to a sensational and truly transformative result.”