No Maintenance at West Side Yard for Two Years!?

The Gateway Project (Wikipidea article) is a $15 billion dollar project by Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation and the owner of Penn Station) that plans to build two new tunnels under the Hudson River (to supplement the current, over-capacity North River Tunnels that run between Penn Station and New Jersey).  The Gateway Project would involve building a new two-track alignment south of the current Northeast Corridor east of Newark Penn Station, and then go under the Hudson River in two new tunnels to a new and expanded "Penn Station South" which would involve new tracks and platforms to the south of the existing tracks.

Here's a map of the project:

Map of the Gateway Project (Photo Credit: Amtrak/National Railroad Passenger Corporation)

Now, at first glance, the Gateway Project seems like it would do very little for the LIRR.  The new tunnels are going under the Hudson River, and the new tracks and new station wouldn't be accessible to the LIRR, which exits Penn Station to the east.  Well, it's not.  Most of the new track slots created through the North River Tunnels would be gobbled up by NJTransit pretty quickly.  They've got a lot more train's they'd just love to send into Penn Station with their shiny new dual-mode locomotives (i.e. Raritan Valley Line trains, WORMS service, other Hoboken Division trains via a possible "Bergen Loop," trains from Bay Head), but they currently lack the required tunnel slots to actually get those new trains into Penn Station.  The Gateway Project would drastically increase the amount of capacity for NJTransit and Amtrak trains coming from the west.  The LIRR might gain a slot or two in the station if an NJTransit train is shifted to Penn Station South, but I wouldn't cross my fingers.

So how does this impact the LIRR? Well, boring these tunnels into the new Penn Station South is going to be a bit tricky.  Carving out a cavern underneath some of the most expensive and jam-packed real estate in the world isn't the simplest of tasks, and the construction of the gateway tunnels are going to impact the LIRR as well.

The two new tunnels are planned to come in towards Manhattan right underneath where the LIRR's West Side Yard currently lies.  And in order to construct these tunnels underneath West Side Yard, the maintenance facility at the south end of the yard is going to need to be closed for 26 months!  That's over two year's the LIRR will be without the important facility at West Side Yard.

An article in Newsday recently shed some light on this dilemma:

Amtrak tunnel project to uproot LIRR facility

Amtrak's plan to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River into Penn Station will require the LIRR to move a critical train maintenance facility from Manhattan to Queens for more than two years, officials said.

Shifting maintenance operations from the Long Island Rail Road's West Side Yard to its Hillside, Queens, facility would put workers and resources farther away from any train breakdown in or near Penn Station for 26 months.

"If we had our druthers, would we be doing this? No," LIRR president Helena Williams said. "But we recognize that we're in a region where . . . intercity rail's future is extremely important, and we're cooperating."

Williams said the move is needed to accommodate Amtrak's Gateway Project, which includes new tunnels and tracks between Penn Station and Newark. One of those tunnels would run directly under the LIRR's maintenance facility on the yard's east side.

Although Gateway is not targeted for completion until 2040, construction on the tunnels needs to begin soon because Manhattan developer Related Companies plans to install structural supports in the same location for a commercial and residential project on top of the yard. The LIRR expects to make about $1 billion from a 99-year lease for the development.

(Read the full article here: Amtrak tunnel project to uproot LIRR facility)

So basically, in order to get this tunnel through, Amtrak is going to have to demolish the maintenance facility at West Side Yard, build what they have to for the Gateway Tunnels, then build the LIRR a whole new facility to replace the one they demolished.  And while all this is going on, the LIRR is going to have to service part of its fleet elsewhere.

Now, the LIRR functioned for many, many years without West Side Yard, as it was only opened in 1987, and the maintenance facility was opened even later than that.  And it's very likely that the LIRR can get along without it for a short while, but the railroad is running a lot more trains nowadays then in 1987, and the M7's, C3's, and DM30AC's are a lot more complicated and technologically advanced than the cars were in 1987, so not having West Side Yard for a while is going to stretch the railroad pretty thin.

All in all, this is not really all that critical, the vast majority of really heavy maintenance and overhauls already occurs at Hillside anyways, so it's not that big a deal that they're going to have to do more things at Hillside.  The article did say that Amtrak will reimburse the LIRR for any moving expenses and for some improvements at the Hillside Facility to handle the increased work load this will put on it, so that's nice.  But the reality of the fact is that repairs and inspections are now probably going to take longer than they do now, since more stuff is going to be happening at Hillside.  The LIRR's got a big enough fleet to absorb the losses, and the M7's have been behaving pretty well recently to not require all that much shop time (thank god!).  So while this will impact the LIRR, it's not going to be a big a problem as some people make out (hopefully).

What may become a problem, however, is that the nearest LIRR maintenance facility is going to be over 11 miles away from Penn Station.  If something goes wrong, you now have a train sitting dead taking up a lot of precious track space in Penn Station, and the nearest place it can get fixed is 11 miles away in Hillside.  So, if there's ever going to be a problem, it's going to take much longer to get it fixed


So what does it all come down to for the average LIRR passenger?
Are there going to be train cancellations?  At this point, I don't know.  It's hard to tell what they are going to need to do.  The schedule magicians are going to have to do a whole lot of fiddling to make everything work.  I'd wager it's safe to say that the LIRR is going to maintain the highest level of service possible, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if three to four trains have to get dropped because of shortages of equipment. (Hint, hint: if you're train was one of the ones that got cut from the schedule for a couple weeks last summer when they were doing work on "switch 813," you're train's are going to be the first candidates for the chopping block.  Sorry!).

With possibly less equipment, delays are going to be bad.  Any small wrinkle in the space-time continuum is going to send whole rush hours down the toilet.   If a train gets stuck someplace, they may not have sufficient equipment to replace it or means to repair it straight away.  With drastically less flexibility, recovering from even the most minor delays is going to be extra difficult, and delays can easily cascade and add up throughout the day.

But the biggest effect felt by passengers of the lot is going to be shorter trains.  I think it is very likely that we will be seeing shorter trains.  With cars out of service for longer, I can defiantly see the LIRR robbing two cars from four trains to make another eight car train.  The LIRR's fleet is going to be very stretched.  So kiss that seat goodbye, those of you who don't get on the train at one of the first three stops!  (good thing I get on my train at the very first stop--Montauk, and get off at the very last--LIC!)

But why?
You may be asking yourselves, why now?  The Gateway Project isn't scheduled to be completed until something like 2040.  Why do they have to bother us now?  Well, the short answer is, thanks to the MTA closing on the Hudson Yards lease Amtrak is going to have to act pretty fast to get the bases for their tunnel in under the yard before the contractors start driving huge steel pillars down into the ground, getting in the way.  (PS: the article says the LIRR is getting $1 billion from the lease.  That's wrong.  MTA Capital Construction is getting the money to put twoards ESA, SAS, and the like.  The only thing the LIRR is getting is, well, this whole mess!)

And the next question arises is that why is the LIRR actually allowing Amtrak to inconvenience them in such a big way?  Well, this is appears to be an act of good faith move by the LIRR.  Amtrak's been remarkably cooperative with East Side Access, and this inter-agency cooperation for the greater good is nice to see.  Of course, this is Penn Station, and Amtrak would get what it wants either way, even though the LIRR does own West Side Yard.  But it is nice to see that agencies are playing nice with each other.

My final concert at this time is the actual peacekeeping of a project like this.  They say it's only going to take 26 months to complete the work.  But we all know how quickly public works projects in this country move...  I mean the Second Avenue Subway was originally due to be completed in the 1930's and look at where we are now...  My fear is that two years and two months will slowly turn into two years and three months, then two years and six months, then four whole years and hundreds of ruined rush hours without West Side Yard.  I just hope they can stick to that 26 month time window.

That's all for now.  There is still a lot more information to come out of this project.  We'll just have to wait and see.