NEW YORK — Amtrak has awarded a contract to engineering, design, and consulting firm Arup to begin preliminary design for expansion of New York’s Penn Station.
The contract, announced Thursday and awarded in partnership with NJ Transit and coordination with New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will allow design work to begin for new tracks, platforms, and concourses. This is part of the larger Gateway project, which seeks to roughly double capacity into Penn Station from the west and relieve a bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor.
NJ.com reports four options are being considered for the expansion, including a track-level addition north and south of the existing station; a deep cavern station underneath the existing station, and an option to run through trains between commuter operators where technology allows it.
“New York Penn Station is tremendously important to Amtrak, and as owners of the facility we are committed to ensuring its future for a new generation of intercity rail travelers and daily commuters,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a press release. “We are eager to begin this important work with our partners that will help unlock service increases under the Gateway Program.”
Arup’s work will produce concepts to be analyzed as part of a federal environmental review for the Penn Station project. Design work is expected to take two years and cost about $73 million.
NJ Transit CEO Kevin Corbett said ridership from the station has grown from 200,000 in 1968 to 600,000 today. “The existing station, even when fully renovated, will still be woefully inadequate to meet current demand much less the anticipated growth for the coming decades,” Corbett said. “This design work is the foundation upon which this vital expansion project will be built, and sets the stage to realizing the full benefits the Gateway Program will deliver to this region.”
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