Ritchie Torres puts Hochul, MTA on blast in pitch to overhaul ‘hellhole’ Penn Station
To say Penn Station has seen better days is an understatement, and Rep. Ritchie Torres is sick of it.
The firebrand New York congressman sent a sharply worded letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul this week, calling out her “bureaucratic bungling” in letting the iconic Big Apple transit hub go to seed, which he labeled “a symbol of urban decay.”
Torres urged Hochul to authorize a Public Private Partnership (P3) to drastically overhaul the 120-year old station, which sees more than 600,000 passengers per day — making it the largest and busiest rail complex in the Western Hemisphere.
P3s are a method of funding in which government agencies and private companies join forces to finance and build large-scale public projects. 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 Center and the Mario Cuomo and Kosciuszko bridges.
“Instead of emulating the success of Governor Cuomo and harnessing the power of public-private partnerships, you have chosen to put the MTA, rather than a P3, in charge of redeveloping Penn Station, which will likely doom Penn’s transformation to a tragic fate of high costs and long delays,” Torres wrote.
Torres has endorsed Cuomo in his comeback bid for New York City mayor. Meanwhile, Torres is eyeing a Democratic primary run of his own against Hochul next year.
Moynihan Train Hall — located just a block away from Penn — demonstrates the stark contrast between the stations. “One is a dream; the other, a nightmare,” he wrote.
Noting the years of delays and billions in cost overruns seen during MTA-led projects like the East Side Access and the Second Avenue Subway Phase 1, Torres points out that the P3-funded Moynihan Train Hall transformation — completed in 2021 — “was completed on-budget and on schedule.
Instead of doubling down on what works, the State of New [York] is reverting back to what fails. Instead of paying less for more, the State of New York is perversely choosing to pay more for less,” he seethed.
Torres pointed out that the sorry state of Penn Station isn’t just “architecturally and aesthetically atrocious,” but actually dangerous, citing a 2017 incident in which the pop of a Taser was mistaken for gunfire, leading to a stampede of panicked passengers that left 16 people injured.
“NYC is one false report of gunfire away from triggering mass hysteria,” he warned. “Penn Station is so crowded, cramped, chaotic and confusing that it is singularly susceptible to deadly stampedes.”
He concludes his letter urging the governor to undertake a P3 by talking up the importance of the Penn Station Access project — which would connect the Bronx to Penn via four new Metro North Stations on Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line.
“The Bronx — indeed all of New York — deserves better than the hellhole of a Penn Station that is left to languish indefinitely in a state of decay.”
The Post reached out to Hochul’s office Sunday but did not immediately hear back.
About The Author
