Penn Station Set for Major World-Class Transformation

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Andy Byfort and an old friend. He’s been in New York a lot. He missed New York. He is back in New York and he’s a special advisor to the Amtrak Board and he’s in charge of transforming Penn Station and transforming part of Amtrak.

0:22 I guess well, Andy Bayfort, I haven’t talked to you in years. I’m glad you’re back in New York. I’m looking forward to seeing you in person. Tell us what’s going on? Are we upgrading Amtrak? And you just give us a briefing of what the what the heck is going on?

0:40 Speaker 2 Sure? Well, John, first of all, great to hear your voice again. I’m so happy to be back in New York City. It’s my spiritual home, you know. Love living in this city, love being back in amongst the vibe.

0:50 And when this job came up, which is about almost exactly a year ago, John the President said he wanted Amtrak to take control of the what was called then the renovation of Penn Station. I jumped up the chance.

1:05 I phoned my chairman, I said, Tony, please give me that job. I want to move back to New York. What could be more important and more iconic than overseeing what I call not renovation. Let’s call it what it is, the total top to bottom transformation of Penn Station. So in giving us the task, Amtrak has been tasked with

1:26 running a P three public private partnership master developer led project to completely transform the station, to renovate and modernize it, to increase concourse capacity. We all know how crowded the station is, to make the station safer and more efficient, to accommodate future passenger growth. Ultimately, and this is something I feel very strongly about to deliver a world class

1:51 experience because my view is this should be America’s world class station. So in no short or in just one year, we have gone from a standing start to putting together a team that is almost on the cusp of being able to announce who the Master’s developer is. We’ve run a two stage procurement competition. We invited letters of interest.

2:15 Anyone could have applied, anyone could throw the hat into the ring to be the developer. We ran that short list thing. We’ve shortlisted three teams John and only yesterday we heard presentations from them. We’re right at the business end of getting this competition concluded, and we will have chosen our master’s developer. So exciting times.

2:37 Speaker 1 Well, I’ll tell you I prefer taking Amtrak when I go to Washington, by the time, even when I fly my private jet, by the time I get to the airport, by the time we take off, by the time we’re tied up in air traffic, by the time we’ll land, by the time we get back to midtown in Washington.

3:02 Because we go to Dallas a lot amtrack is.

3:06 Speaker 2 Better there you go, so, but we want to make it better still, John So and my project is it is just one of many things that are going on at AMCHAK. Hopefully you’ve had the chance to use one of our beautiful newest cellar trains. They are transforming travel on the Northeast corridor between Boston and DC, so newer

3:24 Cellar trains. We have been undertaking improvements at the other major stations such as Baltimore, Washington, DC, Chicago. We’ve got a lot of work undergoing underway. We’re renewing bridges, We’re renewing tunnels, we are upgrading our on board service, bringing back premium catering, improving the Wi Fi to make sure that you can stay connected. We are procuring a whole

3:52 new long distance fleet. But the one thing that I feel strongly about is in the middle of that Northeast corridor, you’ve still got this sub Optimore station at Penn Station, nowhere near good enough for New York. It was designed for two hundred thousand people a day. It served six hundred thousand people a day. It’s a miracle that we

4:11 keep it going. So what we want to do is give New York America’s world class station. And so once we’ve chosen this master developer, there’s about a year and a half in which we advance the design. We get all the knee per environmental work done, and we get to financial and commercial clothes. But we then want to

4:30 have we are committed to having a shovel in the ground by the end of twenty twenty seven to then give New Yorkers, New Jerseyans, and you know, all Americans, really a station worthy of New York City. So, you know, people say to me, how much it’s going to cost, how long is it going to take. I don’t know

4:46 that until we choose the winning bid. But what I can tell your listeners is watch this space. We’re going to give you an unbelievable pen station over the next few years.

4:57 Speaker 1 Let’s talk about high speed will how far are we away from it from making in it even faster than the exceller, because I always take the exceller.

5:09 Speaker 2 Yeah, sure, so funny enough, John, you should answer that that was my previous role at Amtrak. I was looking at high speed options for Amtrak, and we were particularly looking at a potential route between Dallas and Houston, which is actually perfect in terms of all the variables. You’ve got to get right, because what you’re looking for a

5:30 city pairings that are basically of a distance apartment. It’s really too long to drive but too short to fly, and you want to achieve downtown to downtown minimal stops pretty much as straight routes, and no excessive curves where the train has to slow down, no interlining, so not working at your high speed training and amongst s freight

5:52 trains or stopping trains or regional trains, fully enclosed and no crossings, no risk of from trespassers. That’s how it works in Europe, that’s how it works in Asia, and I believe that America must embrace that technology. So in the meantime, we do have the estella and the newest sellers do go faster than the old ones. They are

6:15 capable of a higher speed. We’re running at one hundred and sixty miles an hour, but not throughout the route, which is why it’s so important that progressively between Boston and DC, which isn’t straight, and that’s something that you know, unless we spend huge amounts of money, it is impossible to achieve. But what we can do is upgrade the

6:34 overhead wires. You can fix impediments, like there’s a tunnel in Baltimore where the train has to slow right down to about thirty miles an hour, So we’re building a new tunnel where the train will be able to go quicker.

6:46 We’ve just begun the commissioning process. We’re halfway through the process of the portal bridge at Newark. We’ve got half of the bridge already in service, which means the train going between Newark and penk and run a lot quicker.

7:03 There’s all sorts of things that are underway, but ultimately my belief is this country needs to embrace high speed rail where it makes sense. You’re not talking about New York to LA, but corridors such as Chicago. Routes out of Chicago, maybe a route to Toronto, maybe Charlotte to Atlanta, Dallas to Houston, Seattle to Vancouver, or on down to Eugene.

7:30 They make real sense, big population areas relatively close together, around up to eight hundred miles. That’s the kind of distance we really should be embracing high speed rail in the future.

7:42 Speaker 1 And there are some people that came in to see us at WABC to talk about the Liberty Liner. Has that been supposed to be a little bit faster than the Excella. Have you heard anything about that?

7:55 Speaker 2 And I have heard of that concept. I think it was actually the same train with a slightly different service model, So I’m aware of that proposal. My focus at the moment is purely on sorting out pen station that I’m certainly extremely busy doing that. But these are exciting times for Amtrack. We’ve got record ridership at the moment. We’ve

8:19 gone way beyond what we had pre COVID. The trains are absolutely firsting. We’ve introduced new services such as the Mardi Grass service between New Orleans and Mobile. Then we’ve also got the Borealis service up serving the Twin cities.

8:38 So it’s a real growth time for Amtrak. Everyone at the company, from the president down, is committed to transforming travel for Americans. We want people to ride the rails, We really want them to enjoy our service, and we’re determined to up our game.

8:55 Speaker 1 Andy Byford, thank you so much, and thank you for what you’re doing for America and what you’re doing for New York and what you’re doing for the Penn Station. And I really do enjoy going New York to Washington by Amtrak and by rail versus going going all the way to the airport. Thank you so much, and let’s

9:18 catch up again real soon.

9:20 Speaker 2 Most certainly, John, we love having you on board. Do let me know when you’re next traveling. I’ll come and ride with you.

9:26 Speaker 1 I look forward to that.