Byford Right to Blast MTA and Lieber over Penn Station Stall: Turvey

Andy Byford’s Daily News opinion piece on Oct. 5 was right to take on the Chris Christie-like behavior of MTA Chairman Janno Lieber. We all have too much to lose if we allow Lieber and the MTA to continue their “four corner stall” at Penn Station.

The management team in charge of the Penn Station Transformation is working towards a transit modernization plan that may include fully utilized gateway tunnels, a worthy and transformed light filled Penn Station and the beginnings of through-running in order to unify our regional commuter rail network in the first half of this century.

The MTA can and should work with Andy Byford, its former New York City Transit president, or earn an ignominious place in history alongside former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who infamously canceled NJ Transit’s Access to the Region’s Core project (ARC)—the predecessor to Amtrak’s Gateway Program—nearly sixteen years ago.

While Christie may feel his actions had merit, the unilateral, last minute and solutionless way in which he went about this has not aged well—nor will Lieber’s conduct. Janno Lieber and the MTA had their turn at the station and offered wholly inadequate and underwhelming largely lightless designs. They were also part of an effort to analyse capacity at Penn Station that cost millions of dollars—perhaps tens of millions—but never bothered to use Rail Traffic Controller simulations (RTC), the software package routinely used by the U.S. rail industry including the MTA to measure rail capacity across networks. While Lieber and the MTA have had many successes, their efforts to redevelop Penn Station but attempt to continue it largely as a lightless basement and non approach to foundational industry standard capacity modelling are not among them. Chris Christie Governor of New Jersey, 2010–2018 Photo: Paul J. Richards / AFP Janno Lieber Chair and CEO, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Photo: Luiz C. Ribeiro / New York Daily News Byford isn’t the problem. He is part of the solution. Yes, he, too, needs to be held to account—and we are certainly doing that: we continue to press him for complete and bona fide RTC simulations (albeit, in fairness, these simulations should have been in the portfolio he assumed when he was assigned the project). And there is certainly room for more transparency on the project. This is all fair game. But the repeated and gratuitous attempts to paint him as a stooge of Trump, Dolan and Vornado is a self-destructive exercise in manipulation. It isn’t even self-serving as it helps no one. They are easy targets given the political orientation of Greater New York, among other things, but our challenge now is to think of our region’s future. Time to put partisanship on the back burner. In this regard, it behooves us to remember that Penn Station will be funded largely by the federal government. Mayor Mamdani’s efforts with Washington on Sunnyside Yards can serve as a possible example for such an approach. Is it too strident to point all this out? Perhaps—but we have everything to lose if we don’t get Penn Station Transformation right. If we were to blow it, who will take responsibility? Success has many authors; failure usually none (with the possible exception of Chris Christie and his ARC debacle). I predict those who are trying to kill this project, if successful, will suffer a similar fate—but what good will that do any of us? If we’re lucky and the stars align, our elected officials and mass transit leaders throughout the region will see the folly in all this and ask Lieber to ditch his defeatist behavior and begin working closely with Byford for the greater good of Greater New York. We have before us the opportunity-of-the-century to secure Greater New York’s transit and economic future if—after so many missteps and false starts—we can finally get Penn Station right. The team of Byford and Penn Transformation Partners represent the best chance we have of making this happen. Channeling Lin-Manuel Miranda, we are not going to let Janno Lieber and his few misguided allies “throw away” our “shot.”

Sam Turvey is the Chairperson of ReThinkNYC as well as a coordinator of the Empire Station Coalition and a coordinator of the Penn Community Defense Fund.