Federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pledged Wednesday that the large overhaul of Penn Station — wrested away from the state of New York earlier this 12 months — will “move at the speed of Trump” as soon as it begins in 2027.
Standing outdoors an entrance to the nation’s busiest rail station, Duffy stated the federal authorities’s April takeover of the undertaking from Governor Kathy Hochul and the MTA will assist put one among President Donald Trump’s transportation objectives on the quick monitor.
“He has a lot on his plate, he’s doing a lot of things,” Duffy stated. “But when I meet with him, this is a common question that he’ll ask me is, ‘Where are we at on Penn Station?’”
Federal officers stated they are going to start accepting proposals in October for the station’s redevelopment and purpose to begin building by the top of 2027.
Duffy defended the federal authorities’s transfer to yank management of the long-planned Penn Station overhaul from the state, saying he didn’t consider New York might pull off the transformation of a transit hub that he stated is a Trump precedence.
“The president cares, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” stated Duffy, who’s already in a authorized battle with Hochul and the MTA over congestion pricing. “This undertaking just isn’t the simplest of tasks to undertake.
“This is a complicated project, which is probably why there’s been a lot of conversations about it, a lot of drawings about it and nothing has ever happened.”
Lately, the MTA has led renovations inside Penn Station’s lower-level concourse, resembling linking the Seventh and Eighth avenue subway traces with the Lengthy Island Rail Street by way of a brilliant retail hall. New showpiece entrances and accessibility upgrades have been added, as nicely.
Hochul ceded New York’s management of the undertaking final spring, saying in a press release Wednesday that one of many first issues she instructed Trump on his return to the presidency in January was that New York wants “the beautiful Penn Station it deserves.”
“Those conversations successfully secured federal funding in April to advance redevelopment, allowing us to reallocate over $1 billion for other critical projects,” Hochul stated within the assertion. “With Secretary Duffy now advancing this project and requesting design proposals, New Yorkers are one step closer to a station worthy of this great city.”
A board exhibiting the DOT and Amtrak’s proposed timeline of Penn Station planning. Aug. 27, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales / THE CITY
Andy Byford, the previous New York Metropolis Transit president who earlier this 12 months was named head of the Penn Station undertaking for Amtrak, promised a “complete, top-to-bottom modernization and transformation” of the transit hub that additionally homes two commuter rail traces, a number of subway traces and a number of other police departments.
“I’m so happy to be back in New York,” stated the British-born Byford, who led London’s transit system after leaving the MTA in February 2020. “This is where I want to be and this is the project that I want to do.”
Byford stated he has spent the final three months in his new position as a particular advisor to the Amtrak board laying out a roadmap for the place issues go subsequent for Penn Station, whose transformation has been repeatedly floated by a number of governors and civic teams.
“It’s been talked about for years — others have tried, but we’re confident that we will succeed,” Byford stated.
He added that there’s “precise and absolute alignment” among the many varied gamers within the undertaking, together with the White Home, the U.S. Division of Transportation, Amtrak, and the regional transit methods that serve Penn Station, the MTA and New Jersey Transit.
“There is this unanimity amongst the stakeholders,” Byford stated. “I think where people have struggled in the past is they maybe didn’t have the backing of the administration or the single-point clarity of who’s in charge of the project.”
The transit veteran praised “good work” on Penn Station’s lower-level concourse — “that does look fundamentally different,” he stated — and added that he shall be in search of enter from the MTA and New Jersey Transit, one other key tenant throughout the sprawling complicated.
“No one’s saying, ‘Leave it as it is,’” Byford stated. “We’re all saying it must be fully completely different and fully remodeled.
One aspect that won’t be part of the deliberate transformation is an thought that might have required razing a whole block of West thirty first Avenue that’s simply south of Penn Station.
Byford stated that concept, first proposed by former governor Andrew Cuomo, is “on hold” and that the Federal Railroad Administration will start a “service-optimization study” this fall to search for methods to maximise practice capability throughout the confines of Penn Station.
Commuters who recurrently journey by way of the station stated latest enhancements have helped, however acknowledged that its popularity stays dirty.
“I don’t think it’s as disgusting as they say it is, however, there is room for improvement,” stated Onifa Davis, 35, a Lengthy Island Rail Street commuter. “There are a lot mentally ill individuals walking around and at times, I have to have my head on a swivel.”
Michael Barnes, a New Jersey Transit commuter, stated his aim in Penn Station is all the time to “get in and get out.”
“The general thinking even before I get here is, ‘Eew,’” he stated in one among NJT’s concourses.
Requested if the Trump administration has plans to rename Penn Station after the president, Duffy cracked that Trump Station “has a nice ring to it.”
Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, stated higher service — and never “a monument to greed or arrogance” — has to come back first.
“The real test of success will be in time savings and better access to basic needs and new opportunities across the region, not in gold plating or mall development,” stated Danny Pearlstein, the group’s coverage director.
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