To say Penn Station has seen higher days is an understatement, and Rep. Ritchie Torres is sick of it.
The firebrand New York congressman despatched a sharply worded letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul this week, calling out her “bureaucratic bungling” in letting the enduring Large Apple transit hub go to seed, which he labeled “a logo of city decay.”
Torres urged Hochul to authorize a Public Personal Partnership (P3) to drastically overhaul the 120-year previous station, which sees greater than 600,000 passengers per day — making it the biggest and busiest rail advanced within the Western Hemisphere.
P3s are a technique of funding through which authorities businesses and personal firms be part of forces to finance and construct large-scale public tasks. Torres pointed to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s adeptness at forging such partnerships, which led to the redevelopment of Moynihan Station, LaGuardia Airport, the Jacob Javits Middle and the Mario Cuomo and Kosciuszko bridges.
“As a substitute of emulating the success of Governor Cuomo and harnessing the facility of public-private partnerships, you will have chosen to place the MTA, relatively than a P3, accountable for redeveloping Penn Station, which is able to seemingly doom Penn’s transformation to a tragic destiny of excessive prices and lengthy delays,” Torres wrote.
Torres has endorsed Cuomo in his comeback bid for New York Metropolis mayor. In the meantime, Torres is eyeing a Democratic major run of his personal in opposition to Hochul subsequent yr.
Moynihan Practice Corridor — situated only a block away from Penn — demonstrates the stark distinction between the stations. “One is a dream; the opposite, a nightmare,” he wrote.
Noting the years of delays and billions in value overruns seen throughout MTA-led tasks just like the East Aspect Entry and the Second Avenue Subway Section 1, Torres factors out that the P3-funded Moynihan Practice Corridor transformation — accomplished in 2021 — “was accomplished on-budget and on schedule.
As a substitute of doubling down on what works, the State of New [York] is reverting again to what fails. As a substitute of paying much less for extra, the State of New York is perversely selecting to pay extra for much less,” he seethed.
Torres identified that the sorry state of Penn Station isn’t simply “architecturally and aesthetically atrocious,” however truly harmful, citing a 2017 incident through which the pop of a Taser was mistaken for gunfire, resulting in a stampede of panicked passengers that left 16 individuals injured.
“NYC is one false report of gunfire away from triggering mass hysteria,” he warned. “Penn Station is so crowded, cramped, chaotic and complicated that it’s singularly inclined to lethal stampedes.”
He concludes his letter urging the governor to undertake a P3 by speaking up the significance of the Penn Station Entry undertaking — which might join the Bronx to Penn through 4 new Metro North Stations on Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line.
“The Bronx — certainly all of New York — deserves higher than the hellhole of a Penn Station that’s left to languish indefinitely in a state of decay.”
The Put up reached out to Hochul’s workplace Sunday however didn’t instantly hear again.
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