Later tonight, Amtrak is going to fully shut down one of the four tubes of the critical East River Tunnel in a foolish repair effort that has already wiped out for at least next three years 25% of all service between Penn Station and Albany as well as 10% of the Long Island Rail Road’s morning peak trains into Penn.

And that’s only if everything works perfectly every day for the next three years. What is far more likely is that the three-tube operations for the LIRR, Amtrak and NJTransit will come to a complete standstill if there’s any sight problem in the three remaining tubes (as there always has been and as there always likely will be). The first day that happens the Amtrak leaders who insisted on this folly must be fired.

President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have already fired the CEO of Amtrak, Steve Gardner; the rest of them should not be spared.

If the meltdown occurs in the next 10 days or so, the error is reversible, as the major demolition of Line 2 will not have started and that tube can be kept open, with repairs instituted nights and weekends only. The work that is commencing later today is only preliminary construction on Line 1, which will then reopen when Line 2 is shut down for what Amtrak is claiming will be 13 months.

New Yorkers ranging from Gov. Hochul to Mayor Adams to Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to Reps. Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik argue correctly that the East River Tunnel can be 100% repaired for the next century using nighttimes and weekends.

Even as Amtrak officials were sitting with Hochul yesterday and offering her more worthless promises, the Amtrak Board of Directors was holding a rare public session. During the meeting they proudly discussed making their capital program more cost effective with four key actions the federal monopoly claims to be doing on all its capital projects.

The first item on that list was “Scope Refinement.” In construction “scope” is the work being done. And scope refinement was the eureka moment on the L train. The original plan for the L was to close the tunnel and jackhammer out the concrete bench walls along the edges of the tubes and then repour new concrete bench walls, burying the electric cables within, a task that is very labor-intensive and time consuming.

The L train scope was changed to leave the bench walls in place and instead hang new cables on racks on the sides of the tubes. That is what allowed the project to switch from a full shutdown to nights and weekends only. And it worked perfectly. And the same can be done with the Amtrak tubes.

During the board meeting, there were a few examples of scope refinement, like the Dock Bridge in Newark and the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel and Susquehanna River Bridge, both in Maryland. Those scopes were reduced to improve efficiency, why not the East River Tunnel?

Amtrak is refusing to adopt a successful strategy that can bring back all the cancelled trains and prevent inevitable major disruptions over the next several years. When things start falling apart, Amtrak will be to blame, but New Yorkers are the ones who will suffer.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/05/23/amtrak-blindness-puts-n-y-at-risk/