Amtrak Won’t Make Key Trump Penn Station Documents Public
Amtrak’s Andy Byford is standing by his refusal to release a key document guiding the federal railroad’s selection of a “master developer” for President Trump’s Penn Station project — drawing the ire of elected officials concerned that New York may end up footing the bill for a project its had no input in shaping.
Amtrak will only release a “summary” of the Request for Proposals for the Penn Station rehab, Byford told elected officials earlier this month.
“Amtrak does intend to publish a summary of the procurement process, including participating teams, overviews of the proposals that proposers will have prepared for public dissemination, and the selection process followed,” Byford said in an April 3 letter to the group of electeds led by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan). (Emphasis added.)
At least two of the three of the finalists have connections to President Trump, who made clear in an interview with the New York Post this month that he will have final say over the selection, which will be announced in June.
Yet Amtrak won’t make public the criteria for that decision — including how the potential developers plan to fund the project.
“We may get stuck with part of the bill,” said Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. “It would be very different if the federal government said, ‘It’s our project, we’re paying for it and we’re deciding,’ but in this case it seems to be, ‘It’s out project, we’re deciding, and you’re going to foot part of the bill.'”
Hoylman-Sigal added that New York officials need to be included in the process before, not after, Amtrak picks its developer.
“I’m very wary of Trump’s personal preferences being baked into the RFP process and we are simply in the dark as to what Amtrak is proposing for this station,” he said. “We’re concerned that he’s violating, it would seem, basic principles of procurement ethics. The concern is that he will give the project to an insider or Trump family friend, as he has been shown to do, and that we won’t get the station that New York City deserves.”
The federal government took over the Penn Station redevelopment from New York last April at the height of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s still-unsuccessful bid to kill congestion pricing. After the federal takeover, Duffy put former New York City Transit President Byford, in charge of the project, which the British rail exec has said will begin construction in 2027.
Despite Byford’s early denials, Trump has made clear that the Penn Station project is his baby. Byford has not said how much the project will cost, but has made clear that the feds plan to ask New York and New Jersey to pay. In January, Byford said he was “talking to the city about how they might play a part in their funding.” Amtrak has also raised the possibility of funding the effort by charging the MTA and NJ Transit “user fees” for their use of the hub.
Amtrak has called its selelection process a “progressive RFP” — meaning the terms of the project are being shaped in collaboration with the three bidders. That raises the possibility that Amtrak will preference Trump’s friends over New York taxpayers — and revive the state’s previous plans to siphon off $1.2 billion New York City tax revenue to fund the project via a handout to Trump-aligned developer Steve Roth, who got cold feet in the post-Covid office tower market and walked away from the project in 2023.
“The risk of, you know, someone rising to the top because they are buddies with Trump is much bigger risk than it is if this were a blind bid,” said Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor of Reinvent Albany. “That could lead to New York paying more money.”
New York officials have been happy to offload the effort to Amtrak — so long as New York isn’t stuck with the bill.
“Gov. Hochul has been clear that while it is ultimately the responsibility of the federal government to fund and execute any project to reimagine Penn Station, the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who rely on this vital transit hub every single day deserve a process that is as open as possible, not something decided in back rooms without transparency,” Hochul spokesman Sean Butler told Streetsblog.
An Amtrak spokesman declined to comment directly on the demand from the elected officials for more transparency, and referred Streetsblog to an online document that emphasizes that the railroad “has been engaging with key stakeholders and organizations regarding the project for months and plans to increase public engagement activities once the master developer is selected and design work is underway.”
That will be too late, Hoylman-Sigal said.
“I think we should be in the conversation at the earliest stages,” he said.
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