New York’s East Side Access Project Explained

Welcome to Infrastructure Spotlight, a new series on Newshacker Blog examining major U.S. infrastructure projects in-depth. The inaugural post is about East Side Access, a major passenger railroad project in New York City.

New York City is the American city with the highest mass transit ridership, with almost 57 percent of commuters making use of transit. This represents about one-third of all U.S. transit riders and two-thirds of all rail riders make trips to or from New York City. Therefore, it is important that the city’s railroad infrastructure is kept in good shape.

The Long Island Rail Road is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s commuter rail service providing service from Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan to destinations on Long Island. It is the busiest commuter rail service in North America.

New York Penn Station is also the busiest passenger rail station in North America. It serves three major rail network providers: the aforementioned LIRR, New Jersey Transit rail services, and Amtrak. It also has connections to the New York City Subway. Presently, Penn Station operates at capacity due to capacity constraints in the train tunnels feeding the station.

The East Side Access project was originally proposed to relieve capacity constraints at Penn Station by extending the LIRR’s Main Line running to its major hub in Jamaica, Queens, into Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s East Side. This would provide two Manhattan terminals for LIRR service and would improve connectivity to Manhattan’s midtown financial district on the East Side and eliminate subway transfers from Penn Station.

The project was first proposed in 1963, but a lack of funding meant that only one tunnel — the 63rd Street Tunnel running from Manhattan to Hunters Point in Queens via Roosevelt Island under the East River — could be built. The rest of the project, including the LIRR section, was canceled.

The 63rd Street Tunnel was built with two levels: the upper level was intended to be used by the subway, while the lower level was built for LIRR trains. It was completed in 1989 and the upper level was opened to regular subway service. After the subway tunnel was connected with other lines in Queens via the 63rd Street Connector in 2001, F trains now use the tunnel at all times.

Subsequently, in the late 1990s, crowding on the LIRR had brought plans to bring the LIRR into Grand Central Terminal as Penn Station was already at capacity. This gave birth to the East Side Access project, which was finally approved by the Federal Transit Administration in mid-2001. The design was approved in 2002.

Plans currently call for a new tunnel to be built connecting the lower level of the 63rd Street Tunnel to a new station built underneath Grand Central to house LIRR trains, and another to connect with the LIRR line in Queens. These tunnels would be 7,200 feet and 5,500 feet long respectively. In total, the project will build 2.41 miles of new electrified railroad tunnels.

The new terminal space in Manhattan would allow for less-busy train services to be rerouted to Grand Central, with only the busiest routes operating into Penn Station. The major transfer at Jamaica Station would be expanded so that that station would essentially be a hub for passengers coming from Long Island to change to other trains to destinations in New York City.

Trains would also no longer operate from Long Island to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and there would be a shuttle running between that station and Jamaica instead.

A possible, unofficial depiction of LIRR service after East Side Access is shown below.

Overcrowding on the 7 subway trains across the East River would be eased after the completion of East Side Access, as would E train service across the East River and near Penn Station. However, it would increase loads on the 4, 5, and 6 subway trains on the Lexington Avenue line, being the main north-south trunk route in Manhattan serving Grand Central.

Despite East Side Access’s many benefits to New York’s commuter rail system, it has been mired in controversy for one major reason: it has experienced severe budget overruns and construction is about 14 years behind schedule. The 2.4-mile-long project was proposed to cost $3.5 billion originally, but the cost has ballooned to over $11.1 billion in the latest estimates. This makes East Side Access the most expensive construction project of this type in the entire world.

The completion date has also been pushed back from 2009 to late 2022, though COVID-19 could push that back to 2023. This means that construction on the two short tunnels, which began in September 2007, would have taken 16 years to finish.

Reasons for the project’s major time delays and cost overruns include bad planning, corruption, bad oversight, bad management, and fraud, according to a House Oversight Committee report in 2015.

In a related project, a new LIRR station at Sunnyside in Queens is planned to open after East Side Access opens in 2022. This would redevelop the Sunnyside Yard at provide space for a new train station, with transit-oriented development planned in the area.

As East Side Access would free up space in Penn Station, the MTA-operated Metro-North Railroad, which provides commuter service to areas north of New York City, is planning to allow their trains to operate into Penn Station. Currently, all Metro-North trains terminate at Grand Central. This is expected to happen after East Side Access opens, and we will cover this in a future post.

In conclusion, the long-overdue, hugely expensive East Side Access would provide great benefits to the New York City commuter rail network. Its completion would finally fulfill a long-owed promise to New Yorkers, and could provide the momentum for other rail projects in New York and America as a whole.