Amtrak Statement on Penn Station Access Project

Amtrak has invested over $140 million and significant staff resources on the Penn Station Access (PSA) project.

We remain committed to this critical project, and being good stewards of taxpayer investment for Amtrak, MTA customers, New York residents, and travelers. Specific to minimizing delays and expediting the project’s completion, Amtrak is collaborating with the MTA on numerous mitigation strategies, including:

• Providing more 55-hr outages as well as three long-term track outages, covering both weekdays and weekends, to give the MTA’s contractor additional time to be more efficient to perform work without having to clear the track for train operations;
• Expanding the Amtrak workforce to provide 190% of the committed amount to provide protection where needed;
• Changing Amtrak rules for worker protection to allow more work to be done for the MTA and its contractor;
• Modifying and lengthening schedules of, and in some cases temporarily suspending Amtrak trains to allow more work to be done safely; and
• Taking over a portion of the work that was originally to have been performed by the MTA’s contractor.

In addition, MTA did not make Amtrak aware of the “Independent Review Consultant” nor involve us in their analysis.