Where Have You Gone, Andy Byford? Penn Station Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You

It is coming on two years since Andy Byford, the much-loved “Train Daddy” of New York City Transit, touted the “golden opportunity” to not just rebuild Penn Station but revamp the chaos of how trains move in and out of it.

Byford stressed back then that he was speaking from his (considerable) experience as a transit operator and not on behalf of his current employer, Amtrak, which happens to own Penn Station.

But if asked, Byford said, he would be happy to have a look at the situation.

“Why not take the opportunity to fix the damn thing once and for all,” he said.

No one here has heard from him since.

The exile of Andy Byford is one of the more confounding story lines in the Rubik’s cube of challenges called Penn Station.

“With so much at stake,” said Sam Turvey of Rethink NYC, a principal advocate for rethinking Penn Station, “why on earth would Amtrak leave one of the world’s most accomplished change agents and transit executives on the sidelines?”

Notwithstanding his experience building rail lines through big cities (most notably the new Elizabeth Line across London), Amtrak sent him off to build rail lines between cities—admittedly high-speed lines of the sort we hardly have in the USA.

But actions by the new Trump administration have reignited the push by advocates to bring back Andy Byford.

For one thing, the Trump administration has pulled the federal support for what was the centerpiece of Byford’s day job, planning a high-speed rail link between Dallas and Houston. The private sector should pay for this, not taxpayers, said the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Amtrak should focus on improving its present service.

Byford is not actually out of a job, but he is a bit out of a mission. All Amtrak officials need to do to recruit him to work on Penn Station is walk down the hall, say advocates for his return.

Equally relevant, the Trump administration has booted the MTA from the lead role planning the renovation of Penn Station. The entire project, both renovating the station and expanding service in and out, is now being run by Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration, a part of the US Department of Transportation.

“I know Amtrak is looking for someone to take over the project, and it is really important that they find the right person to lead a complex planning and implementation process,” said Tom Wright, head of the Regional Plan Association and co-chair of the Station Working Advisory Group the railroads set up to discuss Penn Station with stakeholders. “Andy is obviously an incredibly talented transit leader and public servant, but I don’t think he is the only person capable of running this project.”

Turvey and other advocates did not actually start out thinking Byford could take over the whole project. They wanted him to lead an independent review of how best to expand service at the station, which Amtrak and New Jersey Transit say will be vital in the next decade.

Which is what brought Byford to speak at that ReThinkNYC forum two years ago. “So it seems to me that this is a golden opportunity for the US and for New York City to have something similar to the Elizabeth Line,” Byford said at the forum, “to have something that has that economic regenerative impact in New York.”

The problem is the railroads, including Byford’s employer Amtrak, were taking a different tack.

Running commuter trains through Penn Station the way the Elizabeth Line runs through London is a good idea, in theory, they say. Workers on Long Island could more easily get to jobs in New Jersey, for example. Or employers could locate offices in cheaper locations around New York rather than expensive ones in Manhattan.

But the immediate need for more service from New Jersey into Manhattan should take priority, the railroads say. Through-running won’t produce enough additional service, they add, which is why they seem to favor a physical expansion of the station.

Since that forum, Byford has not said another word in public about Penn Station.

But his fans continue to press for his involvement. “He is the best, and knows how to put difficult problems in place,” said Robert Paaswell, the former head of the Chicago Transit Authority and an expert on transit issues at City College.

Eugene Sinigalliano, who lives on the block just south of Penn Station and fears it would be demolished by a southern expansion, says the railroads and their estimates of ridership and service have lost credibility.

FRA officials say they are committed to consulting Sinigalliano and other stakeholders and have signaled they are considering an independent review of ridership estimates and whether through-running is a viable alternative to a physical expansion of the station.

“Implementing through-running would obviate the need to demolish our community and provide a cost-effective, superior, and transformative operating model to the region,” Sinigalliano said in a newsletter this month. “We believe a bona fide independent review supervised by the FRA will bear this out and we can get on to creating a worthy transit plan below street level and worthy Penn Station above ground that unlocks a once-in-a-century opportunity and move away from the plainly destructive plans the Railroads have been pursuing for my neighborhood.”

Professor Paaswell notes that a key challenge is getting Amtrak, the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road, and New Jersey Transit on the same page on bringing the three railroads up to the same modern standards and agreeing on who has priority to use which tracks.

One unknown with bringing back Byford is that his relationship with the MTA is, to say the least, freighted. He was much loved by transit riders when he worked there running subways and buses. But Andrew Cuomo, then governor, ran him out of the job in 2020 after a dispute over how to repair the L line, which had suffered great damage in Superstorm Sandy.

Cuomo, of course, was himself ousted as governor, but is now the front-runner to be mayor. The current mayor has had very little involvement with Penn Station. But no one knows if a Mayor Cuomo would want more of a say.

There was a bit of “let’s move on from all that” in Byford’s tone two years ago when he spoke to the ReThinkNYC forum.

“I live in the States now, I’m going to be an American hopefully in a few years’ time, and I want to do my bit for the States,” Byford said.