Repairs of East River Tunnel to Begin as Amtrak Kicks-Off Partial Closure

Amtrak recently began preparations for the long-delayed much needed repairs on two of the four-tubes that make up the tunnel beneath the East River used daily by Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, and New Jersey Transit. Although the pair of century-old tubes “remained structurally sound following Hurricane Sandy,” which hit New York City in 2012, they have since deteriorated and suffered system failures after being inundated with corrosive salt water. Due to concerns of reduced train capacity and potential project complications that could snarl commutes, both Gov. Hochul and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) urged Amtrak to “avoid a tube outage by carrying out the work on nights and weekends” like the MTA’s repairs to the East River L-train tunnel in 2019. However, Amtrak “maintains that only a full shut down of each tube allows workers to rebuild walls so they can replace wiring and bolster the ground on which track is laid to be more resilient to flooding.” The initial Friday, May 23rd evening closure of a single tube is scheduled to last 10 days and following the shoring up of electrical infrastructure by crews, will be reopened and the second tube will be shut down for 13 months. Three months following the reopening of the fully repaired second tube, the first tube will undergo the same 13-month reconstruction. The cost of the two-and-a-half-year project is estimated to total $1.6 billion; and “all told, the work will keep one tube of the East River Tunnel that connects riders to Penn Station out of service through 2027, at the earliest.”

Source:    https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transportation/amtrak-close-east-river-tunnel-it-kicks-16b-repairs