Politics

Inside the crumbling, leaky, century-old tunnel at the center of a fight between Amtrak and MTA

Ninety feet below the East River, Amtrak’s 110-year-old train tunnels are slowly filling with salty water dripping on high-voltage cables as steel is nearly corroded to dust.

Above ground, heads of Amtrak and the Metropolitan Transit Agency are publicly sparring about who should take the blame for the millions of riders about to suffer train delays starting May 23 when one of the tracks in the tunnel is closed for much-needed repairs.

Liam McQuat, vice president of engineering services at Amtrak, said there’s no alternative to the company’s repair plan that would squeeze another 100 years out of the East River Tunnel with “minimal intervention.”

“This has been 12 years in the making, and there’s been an awful lot of analysis ongoing over that 12 years to develop a solution,” McQuat said.

The East River Tunnel opened to train traffic in 1910. The 2.5-mile stretch runs under the East River and connects Queens to Penn Station. James Keivom

Amtrak engineers have insisted the MTA has been actively working on Amtrak’s much-maligned, $1.6 billion service plan behind the scenes — even approving it in October 2023. But MTA heads have continued to publicly distance themselves from the impending delays.

“It’s Amtrak’s operation. It’s their decision to make. It’s their responsibility,” Long Island Rail Road president Rob Free said at a press conference Thursday.

“We were forced to make this decision,” Free said.

Amtrak engineers took reporters on a tour of one of the corroded tunnels in the overnight hours Wednesday into Thursday to prove their point that the repairs cannot be completed on nights and weekends as Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and MTA board members have all publicly suggested in recent weeks.

During the three-year, $1.6 billion project, workers will rehabilitate two tunnels that run from Queens into Manhattan. Amtrak plans to fully close the first tunnel May 23.

That would only give workers three hours per night to work on the dilapidated tunnels, McQuat said.

Instead, Amtrak is insisting on a full shutdown of one of the tunnel lanes for the next 13 months. Once construction is complete, workers would take a three-month interlude before starting repairs on another track in the tunnel, which would also be closed for at least 13 months for repairs.

Construction should end by late 2027, assuming no delays, McQuat said. 

Amtrak took its case to the media, inviting reporters to tour the tunnel after the governor and mayor both sided against Amtrak in the fight over the East River Tunnel service plan. James Keivom

The tunnel was walloped by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Rain and flooding from the superstorm entered the tunnel from both the Queens and Manhattan ends as well as one of the shafts, according to an Amtrak spokesperson.

On the tunnel tour, Amtrak engineers highlighted 12,000-volt cables encased in concrete bench walls that are eroding and crumbling because of the salt water that’s steadily leaking into the 2.5-mile tunnel.

Salt water seeping into a cracked bench wall over time will damage the cables, which can lead to explosions and fires, said Derick Hallahan, assistant vice president of major programs, tunnels and systems for Amtrak.

Amtrak engineer David Cooper demonstrated to reporters how water-damaged pieces of steel are flaking off the tunnel’s walls. James Keivom
Amtrak officials tour tube No. 2 of the East River Tunnel on Thursday, May 15, 2025, in New York. James Keivom

“As that water comes down, it is dripping over some of the power cables,” Hallahan said.

The water can cause dangerous conditions like arcing, which is when an electrical current jumps to another area, sparking a fire, Hallahan said.

It can take workers several nights in a tunnel to fix a broken cable, Cooper said.

These corroded pieces of the tunnel walls show the extent of the damage Superstorm Sandy inflicted on the old passageway. James Keivom

The crumbling bench walls are also supposed to act as an egress for repair crews and riders during emergency evacuations, said David Cooper, senior principal project manager at Amtrak. But the walls are falling apart so much that workers had to place metal sheets on top as a makeshift bridge.

“In a lot of cases, we’ll chip away concrete that looks like it’s going to fall so it doesn’t fall on the track and a train hits it,” Cooper said.

The tracks will also undergo updates to stop standing water from collecting. Currently the lines have ballasted tracks, but Amtrak will update to modern direct-fixation tracks, which are more stable and allow for better drainage, Cooper said.

MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber has suggested Amtrak follow the lead of the MTA, which closed the L train track during nights and weekends when workers needed to repair a bench wall in 2019. That work was also needed due to the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.

Twelve-thousand-volt cables, similar to the melted cable shown here, are increasingly exposed to salt water seeping in through cracks in the tunnel’s crumbling concrete. The exposure can lead to explosions and fires. James Keivom

But the repairs needed in the East River Tunnel are much greater than the rehab needed in the L train tunnel, McQuat said.

MTA heads have blasted Amtrak’s plan, insisting that closing one of the tunnel’s four tracks will cause untenable train delays. But Amtrak plans to go full speed ahead with the closure as there is no plan B, engineers insisted to reporters Thursday.

The tunnel’s closing date has already been delayed.

Amtrak announced the closure had been pushed back from May 9 to May 23 — because the MTA was still finishing the LIRR’s East-Bound Reroute project, which needs to be completed before work on the tunnel can start.

“We’re currently working with the MTA to confirm,” Hallahan said, adding that the project is going through “final commissioning.”

“We’re ready to start that long-term outage,” Hallahan said.

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