As I reported on Aug. 27, 2025, Andy Byford, New York’s beloved “Train Daddy,” is back in town. He earned his local fame (which enhanced his already global reputation on the rail scene) by running MTA New York City Transit in an outstanding manner. This time, he is supervising the redevelopment of New York’s Penn Station for Amtrak, the lead agency on the project. Amtrak on Feb. 4 finally provided more details (see below).
I reported in August that Byford announced a Penn Station development design competition that would take place in 2026. A “master developer” would be selected in late 2025, with preliminary design and NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) activities coming in 2026, according to USDOT’s New York Penn Station Transformation Schedule. As reported, construction was supposed to begin by the end of 2027. Amtrak became the lead agency, since the POTUS 47 Administration took the $7 billion project away from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in April 2025 and pulled grant funding. Byford said: “The transformation of Penn Station must be much more than bricks and mortar. It must be about making the station operationally sound, safe, clean and easy to navigate.” He added he could handle a station project of this magnitude, mentioning the London Bridge Station project in the U.K.. He managed Southeastern Trains services into that station during its rebuild, as Ops Director. “Customers need to feel like they know where to go,” Byford said. Regarding the station as it exists today, he acknowledged: “Everybody recognizes that this is not good enough.”
(Editor’s Note: Byford, prior to returning to the U.S. and joining Amtrak, was Commissioner of Transport for London and oversaw the final stages, completion and May 17, 2022 opening by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail), calling it “without a doubt, the highlight of my career.” As TfL Commissioner, Byford took over a project plagued by delays and budget problems, driving it to the finish line. One trainset on the new line was named after him to mark his contribution. – William C. Vantuono)
NEW INFORMATION
Amtrak on Feb. 4 finally clarified most of the process for this massive project, revealing the three “master developers,” albeit without any details about what companies they are comprised of. A PDF (download below) with FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) spells out the process, though no timeline is given, with one exception: “Design ideas or concepts for Penn Station have not been presented to Amtrak. Proposers will submit preliminary design concepts to Amtrak as part of their RFP submission due on
May 4, 2026.” A project website has been added: New York Penn Station Transformation, whose purpose is keeping the public apprised of updates.
BACKGROUND
Before Amtrak released its public information, there were many reports in local media, all of which provided more detail on the “master developers” but not much else. Did someone within Amtrak “leak” the information to the media? I don’t know, but at least we now have much more detail than before.
All these reports said that there are now three “master developer” finalists. Ramsey Khalifeh, a transportation reporter at New York City NPR station WNYC, reported Jan. 21 on the station’s affiliated news website, Gothamist: “To move, or not to move? That was the question hovering over Madison Square Garden as Amtrak released a shortlist of finalists to overhaul Penn Station, located beneath the arena. The national railroad announced three consortia will vie for a lucrative contract to rebuild—and eventually run—the nation’s busiest transit hub, which is notorious for being dingy, dark and difficult to navigate. The list comes less than a year after [POTUS 47] took control of the long-stalled project from the MTA and turned it over to Amtrak, which owns the station.”
According to Khalifeh, “The feds provided no details on the actual proposals from each group, but two of them have publicly presented their visions to redevelop the station. One would force Madison Square Garden to move across Seventh Avenue to create a new light-filled train station. Another would leave the arena in place, while carving out new entrances and windows that make the station easier to navigate.”
The Pennsylvania Railroad built the original Penn Station as the centerpiece of its massive New York Improvements project, which also included two Hudson River Tunnels, four East River tunnels and Sunnyside Yard. It opened for service in 1910. Universally recognized as a magnificent work of architecture, the McKim, Mead & White-designed Beaux-Arts style building lasted only until 1963. Since that time, only the basement has remained, with the current Madison Square Garden (MSG) on top of it. Preservationists and aficionados of architectural and urbanist style have lamented the loss of the station ever since. Their only consolation is Amtrak-exclusive Moynihan Train Hall, located across the street in the repurposed James A. Farley Post Office building. The two stations are physically connected only at the train platform level. To access one from the other, riders must exit and walk across 8th Avenue.
The Competitors
The three finalists are Grand Penn Partners/Macquarie Capital, Halmar International and Penn Forward Now. At this time, I don’t know what sorts of plans the finalists in the present competition will offer, but their websites give us a bit of an indication.
Grand Penn Partners is expected propose a building with the classical features that characterized the original Penn Station: “[Our] mission is to advocate for a major [complete] renovation of Penn Station to return it to its grand and glorious prominence serving as a world-class, sustainable public space and transportation destination that will transform the neighborhood and serve the needs of commuters, community, businesses, and visitors in an uplifting and gratifying building that relates to the design and architecture of the original Penn Station and the existing Grand Central Terminal. When Andy Byford, Amtrak’s special advisor overseeing the redevelopment of Penn Station called for proposals that will truly be transformative, we believe that the Grand Penn Partners/Macquarie Capital proposal is the only plan that can deliver on that mission.” Macquarie Capital is a unit of global financial services firm Macquarie Group.
Images on the Grand Penn Partners website show a new park, to be named Grand Penn Park, in front of the station. The MSG cylinder would be lower than it is today and would be located across Seventh Avenue from Two Penn Plaza. There would be “a unified, single level concourse” for access to trains, with curved glass reminiscent of the original Penn Station. The Seventh Avenue concourse would feature a reproduction of the original facade, with no structure behind it, except a glass-curtain building. Grand Penn Partners says that the project is estimated to cost $7.5 billion and be ready for service in 2036, including the new MSG arena.
Halmar International (a subsidiary of ASTM Group, the second largest toll road concessionaire by road-miles in the world), founded in 1962, is headquartered in Nanuet, in Rockland County, N.Y., near New Jersey Transit’s Pascack Valley Line. Halmar is working on the Penn Station Access Project for MTA Metro-North Railroad, which will bring that railroad into Penn Station for the first time and add new stations in the Bronx, along the Hell Gate Bridge route. That route hosts Amtrak trains between Penn Station and New Rochelle, where the line joins the historic New Haven main to Boston, part of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC). The route is also used by trains to Springfield, Mass., and the Vermonter. The project includes 19 miles of new track for Amtrak and Metro-North. Last September, Halmar was awarded a contract for Design/Build services for the planned Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway from its current terminal at 96th Street to 125th Street. At this writing, Halmar’s website did not mention the proposed Penn Station project, but Khalifeh reported in Gothamist: “Halmar International, which is currently expanding the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem, is behind the other public proposal. Its plan would keep MSG in place and renovate Penn Station without expanding service, while also renovating the exterior of the arena’s dome.”
Reactions and Questions
On Jan. 22, Streetsblog NYC ran an article by Dave Colon that provided more information about the finalists. It bore the headline “Amtrak Quietly Fast-Tracking Trump Penn Station Transformation.” “Amtrak won’t say whether it will make public its criteria for picking a contractor for its [POTUS 47]-ified Penn Station revamp,” Colon wrote.“Will Penn Station riders get Mystery Box A, Mystery Box B or Mystery Box C? In an unpublicized, 25-word update posted to the Amtrak Vendor Portal on Tuesday, the federal railroad revealed the names of three companies that answered its call to express interest in building the mega-project—with no additional information.” Colon quoted Rachel Fauss, Senior Policy Advisor at Reinvent Albany: “Everyone should be able to see the RFP. Without it, I don’t know how the selection process will work, whether it’s competitive, or whether this has been pre-selected with one contractor in mind the whole time. The default is being public for these things. If the RFP isn’t public, it isn’t transparent.”
“Byford and Amtrak have framed the project as a type of public-private partnership known as a ‘Design, Build, Operate, Manage and Finance,’ an arrangement in which a developer designs and builds the project with its own funding, which it can then recoup through ‘user fees’ once the project is done,” Colon reported “That arrangement could leave commuter railroad riders on NJ Transit and the MTA paying a surcharge on their tickets, or simply pass the costs onto the three railroads that operate out of Penn Station: MTA Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and Amtrak.” Colon ended by quoting Fauss: “Those are the back doorways that New York will have to pay.”
Bryan Gottlieb raised technical concerns in an article in Engineering News Record (ENR) on Jan. 22, which bore the headline “Amtrak’s Penn Station Shortlist Puts Delivery Risk at Center Stage.” “Amtrak on Jan. 21 released a shortlist of three finalists for New York City’s Penn Station redevelopment, moving the project into a phase that will test if a fast-tracked public-private partnership can upgrade major infrastructure under an active rail hub while maintaining daily operations,” he wrote. “The list follows bid submissions from four teams last December under a design-build-finance-maintain procurement. Narrowing the field to three finalists moves the Penn Station rebuild from open solicitation to a detailed evaluation as the railroad prepares to select a master developer by May and announce an award by June.”
Gottlieb focused on technical and operational issues that are part of the project, and he quoted one advocate’s view: “‘There are some decided red flags around the Penn Station realignment,’ Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of government affairs and policy at the Rail Passengers Association, told WNYC, reflecting broader concerns about project delivery and oversight as the procurement advances.”
Gottlieb also mentioned a list of unresolved issues: “Proposal documents, preliminary designs, cost ranges and phasing plans have not been released. Nor have officials disclosed how unforeseen conditions—common in work at the station—would be managed under the P3 contract or how construction and operational risks would be allocated between the public owner and private developer. Those details are expected after the master developer is selected. For now, the shortlist announcement is a mile marker indicating momentum from concept to delivery.”
Michael Oreskes concentrated on the transparency issue in a Jan. 24 Chelsea News report that bore the headline, “Penn Station Feud Brewing?” It began, “Some officials were surprised to see three company names on a ‘short list’ to redevelop Penn Station suddenly appear on an Amtrak website with no further explanation. Andy Byford, the man running the show for Amtrak, says he’s being as transparent as he can.” Oreskes reported on a call for transparency by Gov. Kathy Hochul, adding: “In a statement to Straus News, Byford said he was scrupulously following Amtrak procurement policy and had vigorously briefed elected leaders, including the governors’ office, as well as a large advisory group of advocates and stakeholders.” He quoted Byford: “From the very start of my involvement in this project, I have committed to a transparent and open process, albeit being ever mindful of the commercial sensitivities that exist in any competitive procurement. Consistent again with standard Amtrak procurement process, the RFP is not shared publicly to maintain commercial confidentiality. That said, when the evaluation is complete and when I make my recommendation to the Amtrak Board in May for a decision, I would expect to be able to share details about how the decision was reached.”
Whether the level of disclosure Byford offered is sufficient now seems to have become at least somewhat controversial, as Oreskes reported: “The selection process became a source of public debate after Amtrak, which owns the station, quietly posted the names of the three finalists for the master developer job on the railroad’s procurement website—and then offered no further comment about how they had been selected or what each of them is proposing.”
Oreskes said more about the process in a Jan. 22 report in the Chelsea News’s sibling publication, the West Side Spirit, headlined “Bidder Unveiled; Will New Penn Plans Push MSG?” “An obscure federal posting recently identified one of the unknown bidders for the job of developing a master plan for the much-delayed Penn Station overhaul, cutting the short list from four to three developers,” Oreskes wrote. “One of the developers is brand new to the competition and little is yet known of their plans. That is the Toronto based company Fengate, which specializes in investing union pension funds in infrastructure and other real property. The other two finalists are part of development groups that have been actively pursuing the Penn Station project for years. They are Halmar International, the U.S. subsidiary of the Italian infrastructure firm ASTM, and Macquarie [Capital], twhich has teamed with Grand Penn [Partners].” He added that neither Amtrak nor Byford disclosed any information beyond the names of the three finalists, the same response Amtrak gave me, although Amtrak said that the selection will be announced in June.
In addition, Oreskes identified the contestant who did not make the cut: “Eliminated was a fourth contender, the architect Richard Cameron, who has long campaigned for the revival of a classical station like the original Penn Station, built in 1910 and torn down in the 1960s as the Pennsylvania Railroad spiraled into insolvency. Allies said he lacked a development partner with convincing resources and experience. ‘We do applaud Richard Cameron in particular as he has championed a great above ground station modeled on the Charles McKim original for decades,’ said one of his supporters, Samuel Turvey of ReThinkNYC. ‘We very much believe Richard’s efforts have already informed and will continue to inform the Penn Station that is eventually built.’”
For years, ReThinkNYC has been proposing a rebuilt Penn Station that would closely resemble the original design. That organization’s current proposal includes wider platforms and improved vertical circulation, reconfiguring track use to improve traffic flow, and through-running. Among ReThinkNYC’s complaints about the current Penn Station: “Penn Station has notoriously narrow platforms, with limited stair and escalator access. This bottleneck creates severe and dangerous overcrowding on both the platforms and concourses.” Some of the organization’s concerns and ideas are in accord with those Byford expressed in his late-August news conference last year.”
ReThinkNYC had promoted Cameron and his plan, which would come close to replicating the original Penn Station as it had existed. In a release dated Jan. 22, Turvey, chair of the organization, expressed disappointment that Cameron’s firm had been eliminated: “Renaissance Rails, an effort spearheaded by Richard Cameron and Fred Knapp and which ReThinkNYC had supported, was not chosen to compete in the final round.”
Turvey lauded the goal of “getting shovels in the ground before the end of 2027” as part of the drive to get the project completed. He also called for using Rail Traffic Controller (RTC) software to develop capacity models to determine how much capacity is needed and, in turn, how much money must be spent, and for transparent disclosure of that data. “After all, our ability to truly modernize our transit capabilities at Penn Station cost effectively via through-running and the fate of the existing neighborhood hangs in the balance while I wait for RTC analysis, some of which I believe has already been performed,” he told me.
In his call for increased transparency, Turvey said: “As to Amtrak and NJ Transit, I must believe one or both railroads have done such calculations as the expansion to the south was in their purview. So, while I eagerly await the work being done by the FRA-sponsored independent review, I very much will keep pursuing the disclosure of work that has already been done by the railroad(s) and thus far withheld from the public. The public deserves to have the best information available with respect to capacity issues for Penn Station in real time. Any of the relevant railroads that are withholding this analysis from that public should release it with dispatch. We are also especially eager to find out how many trains per hour the various iterations of a Penn South Expansion can generate as the railroads have not provided any number—even from their less-probative capacity reviews—except to say they cannot get to the 48 trains per hour under the Hudson River, a number they state as a red line for everyone else except them apparently. Is it 38? 40? 42? The public once again deserves to know.”
Byford’s claims that he will promote through-running with trains operating on both sides of Penn Station and that he is not interested in building the additional tracks as the Penn South Station project envisions seem to be popular with advocates who do not see the need to spend so much money on additional infrastructure, when a project of smaller scope that is operated carefully and wisely can serve the trains and riders that need to be served, and at a considerable cost saving.
Whether Byford’s August pronouncement concerning the Penn South proposal will end the debate over capacity, or whether it will start up again remains to be seen. Turvey wants more transparency concerning the issue, and other advocates will be watching. If the capacity issue arises again, I will report on it. I also plan to report on the selection of the “master developer.” If I learn more about the three shortlisted firms or about how Amtrak is managing the selection, I plan to report about that, too.
