Amtrak’s Penn Station Plans Assume Gateway Tunnel Will Happen Despite Trump ‘Termination’

Amtrak's Andy Byford is making a big assumption about his plans for Penn Station — and you know what happens when you assume.

The railroad's big plans for a new Penn Station still assume a capacity boost from the Gateway Tunnel project — despite President Trump's recent declarations that he has "terminated" the project.

Amtrak on Thursday announced that it would begin to solicit letters of interest from developers for the renovation of the country's largest train hub, and that the Federal Railroad Administration has begun its "service optimization study" to understand how to provide the most service within Penn Station's existing footprint.

The study will include an in-depth look at how to bring "through-running" to the station that the Amtrak, NJ Transit and the MTA currently use as a terminal, a top Amtrak official responsible for Penn Station's redevelopment told reporters at a background briefing. (Streetsblog agreed not to identify the official in accordance with Amtrak's terms for attendance at the briefing.)

Asked if Amtrak would evaluate a scenario where Gateway doesn't happen, the official said the railroad continues to assume the tunnel really is getting built.

Trump, however, has been hostile to the project even as experts say that failing to repair the existing two cross-Hudson River tunnels into and out of Penn Station would cause catastrophic economic damage to the country.

In his first term in office, Trump simply stopped all forward momentum on federal grant approvals to make Gateway happen, delaying the project for years. President Joe Biden handed the project the biggest federal transit grant in a decade, but Trump claims he has canceled that $6.88-billion allotment.

Trump has on three occasions during the ongoing government shutdown said he doesn't have to respect grant agreements signed between New York and the federal government. White House Budget Director Russell Vought tweeted earlier this month that $18 billion worth of grants for the Second Avenue subway and Gateway "have been put on hold" so the feds could make sure the money wasn't going to allegedly "unconstitutional DEI principles."

Trump himself said the two projects were "terminated" during a press conference in the middle of October, which was contradicted a day later by an anonymous DOT official who told Politico that wasn't the case. But then days after that, Trump again told reporters that the funding decision was "up to me."

The relationship between Gateway and a new Penn Station is obvious: By repairing the existing train tunnels under the Hudson River and adding two more tunnels between Manhattan and the continental United States, Gateway will greatly expand the train capacity in and out of Penn Station. Transporation Secretary Sean Duffy put Byford, the former president of MTA New York City Transit, in charge of the station's redevelopment in May.

It's crucial that the new Penn Station actually improves service for train riders. Increased capacity running through Penn could unlock housing and economic opportunities across the region, and make it possible huge growth without having to greatly expand car infrastructure. But that work also doesn’t necessarily need to involve creating the grand classical train hall of Trump's dreams — it’s about tweaks to the station's guts down to the platform level rather than the “big beautiful” structure that Sean Duffy has promised.

Trump's repeated attacks on Gateway may simply be the normal piques of a president prone to lashing out under pressure. But as Trump continues to wage war on cities across the country — and continues to threaten New York in the event that the city elects Zohran Mamdani — Amtrak’s optimism may be somewhat unfounded. After all, Trump already used an entire four-year presidential term to stymie the cross-Hudson tunnels.

Amtrak on Thursday pushed back against the idea that its Penn redevelopment process would require New York to bribe the president — after Byford last week declared, "My trump card is the Trump Card," in the event that his plans face "some resistance" from "someone that's being unduly obstructive or something that's causing me a problem."

Byford last week also said that the president would have the ultimate say on the Penn Station reconstruction plan after it gets approved by the Amtrak board — raising concerns from government ethics experts who said that was not the way a normal, law-abiding bidding process should work.

But the top ranking Amtrak official — who, again, Streetsblog agreed not to name — insisted on Thursday that the bidding process for the project would be fair and open. The president's sign-off is merely a formality driven by his interest in the project, the official said.

Asked directly what would happen if Trump didn't like the design Byford and the Amtrak board suggested, however, the official insisted such a scenario was unlikely — piling one more assumption on top of another.