Byford Plan: Figure Out How to Get LIRR to Run to New Jersey

No one can accuse Andy Byford of thinking small.

Byford presented to a breakfast of New York power brokers his game plan for transforming (his word) Penn Station, a task others before him have confronted with less than awesome results.

But he started his talk in a surprising place–not with how to restore the lost train hall or whether it was necessary to move Madison Square Garden, although he got to both.

No, Andy Byford, English by birth, New Yorker by choice, started his presentation with how the two main commuter lines should reboot their operations so the Long Island Rail Road runs to New Jersey and New Jersey Transit continues through Manhattan to Queens, Long Island, or even the Bronx and Connecticut.

This has long been a dream of transit and community advocates. But the railroads, including Byford’s own employer, Amtrak, have treated it as a pipe dream, or at best a dream to defer until more urgent matters were attended. Byford changed all that as he opened his talk to the Association for a Better New York, founded half a century ago by a Realtor and a hotelier to drive the city’s economy forward.

The New York region has a “golden opportunity” to drive its economy now, Byford told the group, by using the Penn Station project to create here what he built there when he ran the transit system in London.

“Can we not make more efficient use of that station?” Byford said of Penn Station. “Are there opportunities to do something like what was done for London? I think so.”

He was speaking specifically of London’s new Elizabeth Line, which he opened in 2022 in the presence of its namesake, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. The new line runs from West to East, connecting, among other points, Heathrow Airport with the financial hubs of The City and Canary Wharf.

“I believe we have, and I will use those two words again, a golden opportunity here to do something similar, because the Elizabeth Line has been transformative,” Byford told the ABNY breakfast. “I saw how new businesses, new homes, all sorts of economic activity basically popped up on the east and the west side of London.”

Byford noted that his enthusiasm for this kind of service in New York was not new. Two years ago, he said much the same thing to a meeting of Samuel Turvey’s ReThinkNYC. But at the time, Byford was an itinerant executive managing Amtrak’s effort to create high-speed service between Dallas and Houston. The Trump administration pulled the plug on that effort, at roughly the same time it took over from the MTA the management of the rebuilding of Penn Station.

“I really want that job,” the suddenly-out-of-mission Byford recalled saying to the chair of Amtrak, Anthony R. Coscia. “Tony, please, let me have a crack at it. It's my kind of challenge.” Byford already knew New York, from his short stint running the Transit Authority, a job Andrew Cuomo gave him and then took back in short order.

“It meant I could get back to New York, and so I'm so happy to be here,” Byford told the ABNY breakfast, which was the first of his three stops that day at influential civic groups who Byford is lining up to support his efforts. Part of that effort has been to assure neighborhood and landmark groups that he won’t be tearing down adjacent blocks, as the railroads had wanted to do, before squeezing out every ounce of capacity from the station’s present footprint.

That, in addition to the potential economic development impact, has been a principal argument for running trains through the station, which is faster and means more trains can be accommodated in the same space.

“There's long been a desire and the talk of having through-running through the center of New York,” Byford noted. “We have it at Amtrak, but so many trains stop and either empty out and go back from whence they came, or stop and then go empty, and trains sit in the depots. So, we should at least explore this.”

That exploration is being conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration, which is studying both what changes would be needed to track and platforms as well as what the actual market would be for service connecting, say, Secaucus to Long Island City.

Long-distance trains have been running through Penn Station since the Pennsylvania Railroad built it in 1910. Amtrak recently announced that it would like to run service from Ronkonkoma on Long Island through Penn Station to points south. But the commuter rail lines were built to end their runs at Penn Station, where they disgorge hundreds of thousands of passengers a day, creating the busiest train station in North America.

Hurdles

The Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit use different train cars, different electrical systems, and employee crews represented by different unions. Additionally, the platforms in Penn Station are narrow, and constricted by the pillars that hold up Madison Square Garden and the office buildings that sprouted when the financially spiraling Pennsylvania railroad tore down the original Penn Station and sold the rights to build on top.

Moving the Garden would allow removal of some, but not all, of those pillars. But moving the Garden would be expensive and time-consuming, and its owner, James Dolan, has shown no interest.

Byford said he did not believe moving the Garden was essential to creating a more efficient station. In soliciting interest from builders who want to be the master developer of a new Penn Station, Byford has left open to their proposals whether to move the Garden or rebuild around it. The Master Developer, Byford said, will be responsible for both building a new, one-level, train hall and for rebuilding tracks and platforms to achieve whatever opportunity the Federal Railroad Administration identifies for more efficient train operations.

Byford sought to allay fears that President Trump, a former New York developer, would meddle with the selection process. The decision, he said, would be made on his recommendation by the Board of Amtrak, which owns the station. Only then, he said, would the plan be shared with the White House.

Amtrak’s nine board members are appointed to five-year terms by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is a member.

“Let me be crystal clear, it is the Amtrak board, and only the Amtrak board, that will make that decision,” Byford said. “We will then notify the White House of the decision, and we’ll show them the design. Because don’t forget, I’m intending to ask them for literally billions of dollars. So, they’re going to certainly want to see what the design looks like. But it’s the Amtrak board that will make that decision.”