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 alternatives 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.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 the plan 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 an overnight tour into 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.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 ...