NY: Amtrak pushes back start of East River Tunnel plan, says closures will remain the same

Amtrak officials announced late Tuesday they’d be pushing back the start of work on the East River Tunnel by two weeks — a day after Mayor Adams joined a growing chorus of elected leaders calling on the federal railroad to halt its plans to close a quarter of the tunnel’s rail tubes for repair, a project Democrats and Republicans alike worry will wreak havoc on the Long Island Rail Road.

In a letter to Gov. Hochul Tuesday evening, Amtrak president Roger Harris acknowledged the concerns, and said a related MTA project was running behind schedule.

“[W]e are working with our partners at MTA and NJ Transit to move the start of construction by two weeks to May 23,” he wrote.

The East River Tunnel, owned by Amtrak and first opened in 1910, consists of four tubes linking Manhattan and Queens. Two of the tubes primarily serve the LIRR, allowing its service to Penn Station. The other two tubes are used by Amtrak for service on the Northeast corridor,  and by NJ Transit for storage of commuter trains in Queens’ Sunnyside yard.

The two non-LIRR tubes were damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and corrosion from salt water has led to signal and power problems. Amtrak’s plan had been to shut down the damaged tubes, one at a time, for 13 months each, starting Friday.

The federal railroad plans a full renovation of the tubes — gutting them and replacing the wiring, tracks, bench walls and other structures.

But the brass at LIRR — the tunnel’s primary user — say that will overload the remaining three tunnels to the extent that there will be no room for error in the railroad’s schedule.

“The slightest deviation could have significant impacts to our operations reliability, including possible shutdowns of service depending on the issue,” LIRR President Rob Free told the MTA’s board last week.

During the outage, the 461 LIRR trains that use the tunnel each day would need to compete for slots in just three tubes with Amtrak passenger trains headed to-and-from Boston via the Hell Gate line, as well as out-of-service NJ Transit trains that continue from Penn Station each morning in order to wait in Queens at the Sunnyside yards for the afternoon rush.

In his letter to Hochul, Harris said he wanted to meet with the governor and MTA leadership in the coming days — not to change the railroad’s plans, but to assure New Yorkers that his railroad could pull it off.

“Any other solution would be an expensive, short-term band-aid and a disservice to passengers and taxpayers,” he wrote.

“We would like to work with you to take advantage of the time created by the delay to refocus on collaborative mitigation solutions.”

The delay comes a day after Adams sent a letter to President Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, joining the chorus and calling on the feds to “direct Amtrak to stand down” and adopt a work plan that would keep the tunnel open during the workday.

“Amtrak has refused to listen to reason, even though New York elected officials across the political spectrum — including [Democratic] Gov. Kathy Hochul, [Republican] Rep. Mike Lawler, and [Republican] Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — have implored Amtrak to come to its senses and back away from this misguided closure plan,” Adams wrote in the letter, obtained by the Daily News.

The MTA has requested that Amtrak opt for a method that would close a tube on nights and weekends only, replacing wiring components and leaving structural portions like the concrete bench walls in place.

The MTA begrudgingly adopted a similar solution in 2019, averting a planned 15-month shutdown of the L train’s Canarsie line tunnel — which had also been flooded by Sandy.

But in an open letter last week, Amtrak’s Harris said the two projects had little in common.

“The differences between the Canarsie Tunnel and the East River Tunnels are substantial,” the Amtrak boss wrote.

“The 12,000-volt AC cables that power trains in the East River Tunnel are encased in concrete bench walls to ensure safety and fire protection, unlike the 600-volt DC cables in the Canarsie Tunnel, which were relocated to wall-mounted racks. Amtrak evaluated the same … approach but found it could not meet required fire ratings or egress space standards.”

In his Monday letter, the mayor pushed back on Amtrak’s assertion, citing a 2020 report by independent experts at London Bridge Associates — who studied similar repairs required on the East River Tunnel’s sister structure, the North River Tunnel between New Jersey and Penn Station.

“[L]eading engineering experts, including London Bridge Associates, have affirmed the viability of an incremental approach that allows the fourth tunnel to remain open during the day, including all rush-hour periods, while repairs are done at night and on weekends, thereby avoiding any potential problems,” Adams wrote.

As the plan currently stands, the East River Tunnel’s Tube No. 1 is set to be taken out of service first for a week of prep work. The tube will then be put back into service while Tube No. 2 is closed for similar work.

Within weeks, according to Amtrak’s plan, Tube No. 2 will be closed for major construction set to last until 2026.

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