A master plan developed for Amtrak’s Sunnyside Yard in Long Island, New York, was recently acknowledged with a National Recognition Award as part of the American Council of Engineering Companies’ (ACEC) 2016 Engineering Excellence Awards. The plan was developed by a joint venture between Gannett Fleming and WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Sunnyside Yard is one of the most important facilities in the entire 453-mile Amtrak Northeast Corridor, as it is the main storage and service point for Penn Station trains. Operating with much of the original technology and safety features installed during its construction in 1910, Sunnyside Yard required a master plan to accommodate anticipated future growth in service demands and employees.
“Amtrak anticipates that both service needs for passengers and the number of staff needed to accommodate additional travel will rise by 50 percent by 2030,” said David Boaté, PE, a Gannett Fleming vice president and leader of Transit & Rail Facilities. “The master plan our joint venture developed addressed both the immediate and long-term needs of Amtrak into account. The planned facilities will be a secure, state-of-the-art complex.”
The yard’s location on a constrained site without any room to expand the footprint required an innovative phasing plan, developed to be unique to Sunnyside Yard, to address the necessary growth. The planned updates include sustainable features, like vegetative roofs that will improve energy efficiency and add aesthetic appeal.
ACEC's annual Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) competition pays tribute to exemplary Member Firm achievements from throughout the world. Since 1967, U.S. engineering firms have entered their most innovative projects and studies in ACEC's annual Engineering Excellence Awards program (EEA)—"the Academy Awards of the engineering industry"—which honors the year's most outstanding engineering accomplishments. Projects that are winners at state level EEA competitions are eligible for ACEC's national EEA competition.
