MTA wants Amtrak to find faster, cheaper solutions to repair East River Tunnels

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it already has committed $432 million in Sandy federal grant funding Sen. Chuck Schumer maintains was supposed to go toward repairing the storm-damaged East River Tunnels, which are used by hundreds of thousands of LIRR commuters.

MTA officials insist they never committed to using the money solely on the project, and remain willing to pay their fair share of the cost of fixing the tunnels, which are owned and maintained by Amtrak. MTA chief development officer Janno Lieber said the authority wants Amtrak to find ways to carry out the work faster, cheaper and with minimal impact to Long Island Rail Road riders.

The tunnels, through which nearly 600 LIRR trains travel daily, were among the hardest hit by the Oct. 29, 2012, storm, which inundated two of the tubes with 14 million gallons of corrosive saltwater. Engineers have said chemicals in the floodwaters will continue to eat away at the concrete structures until the repairs are made.

In 2016, the Federal Transit Administration awarded the MTA $432 million in Sandy repair funds. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, said he helped secure the funding with the understanding it would be directed toward the repair of the tunnels, because the LIRR is their primary user, and because Amtrak was not eligible to win the grant itself.

MTA officials acknowledged Tuesday they spent the grant money on high-priority Sandy projects that, unlike the East River Tunnel job, were ready to be executed. 

Lieber said the question of how the tunnel project will be funded “is certainly not the MTA’s to solve” on its own. He said the authority is willing to pay its fair share of the work based on a long-held “joint facilities agreement” between the LIRR and Amtrak — about 24 percent.

“There is clearly a difference of opinion on whether the $432 million that Congress granted the MTA was exclusively for this, or more broadly for Sandy repairs,” Lieber said. “But we’re good for our share, whatever the source, and the grant money is less of an issue than the bigger question of how do we make this project less expensive and on-time and done in an innovative way.”

Lieber and other senior MTA officials have been pushing Amtrak to adopt some of their strategies to bring in the project at a lower cost and shorter timeline — especially since having the tunnels in good working order is critical to several LIRR capacity expansion projects, including the ongoing construction of a Third Track on the railroad’s Main Line in Nassau and the East Side Access link to Grand Central Terminal. 

Lieber said Amtrak could learn from the MTA’s recent overhaul of a plan to repair Sandy damage inside a Brooklyn tunnel used by its L subway line. The initial plan called for the tunnel to be shut down for 15 months, but a change in design and materials has allowed the tunnel to remain open during weekdays.

Amtrak has said relatively little about its planned fixes, which aren’t expected to begin until after the MTA completes its East Side Access project — creating a second route for the LIRR to and from Manhattan that would provide needed redundancy while the two damaged tunnels are taken out of service for repairs.

Amtrak previously said construction may not begin until 2025, take four years to complete, and cost up to $1 billion. Last week, Amtrak said only that it expects to release a new timeline and budget for the project next year, and to complete its design by early 2021.

“We are already working with, and will continue to collaborate with MTA, as we progress with the design of the East River Tunnel,” Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said Tuesday. “As we continue with project design, we will have joint conversations about the best methods to share costs and complete the work and minimize impact to our customers.”

Despite Amtrak’s assurances, Lieber expressed concern about Amtrak’s track record — noting the federally funded railroad’s lack of resources have snarled the progress of several major infrastructure projects in the region. The tunnel repair project already has tripled in cost and doubled in length since Amtrak first proposed it in 2014.

Amtrak noted that several infrastructure renewal projects in Penn Station over the last two years have been completed “on time, within budget, and safely.”

Schumer expressed frustration that Amtrak and the MTA “remain misaligned” on the repair plan, and said the continued deferral of the work “could translate into years of delays and doom for LIRR riders.”

“LIRR passengers want immediate action, not excuses, to fix the already Sandy-damaged tunnels,” Schumer said. “Passengers are sick and tired of the delays, especially when the money to help fix the problem sits in the hands of the MTA, which must work with Amtrak — not finger-point — on putting the dollars to work for Long Island and the whole region’s economy.” 

Despite a 2014 engineer’s report detailing "severe cracks" and "very deep" holes in the concrete tunnels caused by Sandy’s floodwaters, Amtrak has vouched for the safety of the structures, which it said are regularly inspected.

Still, LIRR on-time performance data shows that delays caused by Amtrak’s infrastructure, including the tunnels, have nearly doubled since before Sandy struck — from 1,003 in 2011 to 1,942 last year. The LIRR runs about three-quarters of its trains inside the tunnels, which are also used by Amtrak and NJ Transit.

To mark the seventh anniversary of Sandy, MTA chairman Patrick Foye and other officials from the authority on Tuesday toured a Coney Island subway yard that was hard-hit, and provided an update on the various recovery and resiliency efforts taken on by the agency.

Foye said the MTA has done a “tremendous amount of work” over the last seven years, including rehabilitating seven out of nine subway tunnels that were similarly damaged by corrosive floodwaters. But Foye acknowledged the East River Tunnel repair job was among the more important Sandy projects yet to be addressed.

“I think there’s work in every agency that remains to be done, and we are committed to wrapping it up,” Foye said.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.