Press Boxed: MTA Boss Accuses Amtrak’s Byford Of ‘Gamesmanship’ With Leaked Letter About Penn Station
Fake friend alert.
MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber accused Amtrak special adviser Andy Byford of disingenuously offering to partner with the federal Penn Station renovation because Byford first sent his offer to the press on Monday before the Lieber got it himself.
In Lieber’s response to Byford on Monday night, the MTA boss alleged that the purpose of Byford’s earlier letter seeking the MTA to sign a “memorandum of agreement” on the Penn Station project was more about one-upping the agency rather than collaborating with it.
“I have your letter dated today — the handling of which unfortunately belies the protestations of good faith it contains,” Lieber’s letter opened. “The letter was sent to me [Monday] at 7:31 a.m. — after press articles detailing its leaked contents had already been published. News flash: that’s not partnership, that’s gamesmanship.”
In his earlier letter, which did indeed appear in Gothamist early Monday, Byford again asked the MTA to sign on to the same “memorandum of agreement” for the Penn Station facelift that New Jersey Transit signed. Since U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy yanked control of the Penn renovation from the MTA in a congestion-pricing-related fit, the MTA has instead relied on its rights as a leaseholder to weigh in how the project will go as opposed to signing a new document guiding the project.
Byford’s letter did not explain what possible advantage there is to either the MTA or the Penn renovation itself if the MTA signed the agreement, but Byford’s letter did indicate that an early version of the contract contained a “requirement for financial contribution” before the MTA asked for some changes to the document.
The MTA ultimately decided against signing, and Lieber’s response to Byford reiterated that the MTA is continuing to rely on its rights as a leaseholder at Penn Station as opposed to signing a new agreement that Lieber said would undercut the MTA’s current rights.
Per the MTA boss’s letter, the MTA’s lease ensures that Amtrak can’t make any unilateral alterations to the Long Island Rail Road area of Penn Station, and that even any changes outside of the LIRR footprint can’t “unduly burden train operations.” According to Lieber, the memorandum of agreement being pushed by Amtrak explicitly puts lease modifications on the table “among other unnecessary and unacceptable terms.”
Beyond the questions about what the MTA or the project stands to gain from the agency signing a contract, Lieber also raised a series of other questions about the future of the project, a public-private partnership between Halmar International and Amtrak. For instance, Lieber asked:
- Why isn’t there a price tag on the project, which is close facsimile to the old Halmar/ASTM plan to build a single concourse station with an Eighth Avenue entrance?
- Who is funding the project?
- How much is Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan being paid for the Infosys Theater, and how much does of the project work will directly upgrade MSG’s property at taxpayer expense?
- Whether Dolan and President Donald Trump talked about the specifics of the project when Trump took in Game 3 of the NBA Finals in Dolan’s luxury box (the one game the Knicks lost)?
- How will the work be phased on a project that’s supposed to begin next year in order to provide the least amount of disruption to riders?
The especially thorny questions of “how much?” and “who pays?” have haunted the Penn project since Byford got involved. Gov. Hochul has been adamant that New York State is not paying a dime to the federally led project, even as Byford has said he thinks he can get the state and city to cough up some cash for the Trump-tinged design.
Byford has also said that the federal government would put in some money for the project, but that the feds wouldn’t cover the full cost of the project that they took control of and picked a plan for.
When Byford and other Penn principals had a press conference to reveal the design elements of the winning bid, no one was willing to say any more than that the renovation would cost between $7 billion and $8 billion. But ASTM executive Peter Cipriano said at the time that availability payments, which are payments made by tenant railroads to the developer (aka “rent”) were very much on the table to pay for the multibillion dollar facelift.
Byford himself invoked Lieber’s boss in response to the MTA’s letter and to questions over why exactly he is pressing the agency to sign the memorandum of agreement.
“We don’t need them to sign; we will proceed regardless,” Byford told Streetsblog in a statement. “Gov. Hochul gets that, the MTA does not, it would appear.”
A spokesperson for Hochul was more diplomatic, but also reiterated that the project to fix the federally owned asset that is Penn Station is the responsibility of the railroad that took over the project.
“Gov. Hochul[‘s] leadership secured the full federal commitment to fund and deliver improvements to an asset Amtrak has owned for decades,” said Hochul spokesperson Sean Butler.
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