"Management decisions at Amtrak have led to repeated delays to the opening of a new Metro-North connection between Penn Station and the east Bronx, the MTA's fed-up chief executive said on Monday. Asked at a press conference about the status of the "Penn Access" project after the feds put two key transit projects on hold last week, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber lit into Amtrak in an extended tirade pointedly directed at the railroad rather than the Trump administration."
"The effort to bring four Metro-North stops to the Bronx neighborhoods of Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester/Van Nest and Hunts Point relies on the MTA expanding an Amtrak-owned right-of-way from two to four tracks. But Amtrak has repeatedly failed to hold up its end of contract agreements with the MTA - forcing costly delays to the project, Lieber told reporters."
""They slow us down every day of the week by not giving outages which were promised in contracts," Lieber explained. "It's their right-of-way and we need their supervisory personnel to stand there and watch us do work. Their people don't show up, and we can't get work done. "The people in Co-op City are waiting for a goddamn train and its outrageous and it's been a problem from the start of the project," he added. Lieber's comments are the harshest words an MTA executive has had for Amtrak since the Metro-North expansion project broke ground in 2022. MTA officials have blamed the federally owned private railroad for delays to the project on at least two previous occasions, and for similar reasons to the ones that Lieber laid out on Monday. In 2023, the MTA said that work was up to nine months behind schedule because Amtrak did not give the agency sufficient access to the tracks on its Hell Gate lin"
MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber blamed Amtrak management decisions for repeated delays to the Penn Access Metro-North expansion connecting Penn Station and the east Bronx. The project requires widening an Amtrak-owned right-of-way from two to four tracks to add four Bronx stops. Amtrak repeatedly failed to provide promised track outages and supervisory personnel, preventing scheduled work and causing costly delays. Residents in Co-op City and other neighborhoods continue to wait for new service. MTA officials cited prior instances of delay, including a 2023 setback of up to nine months tied to limited Hell Gate track access.
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