NEW YORK—Amtrak is planning to close some tracks for weeks and months at a time as it undertakes repairs at New York’s congested Pennsylvania Station, the site of recent derailments that disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of commuters.
Amtrak Chief Executive Officer Wick Moorman announced the repairs on Thursday but did not provide details of which tracks could be closed, when and for how long.
According to Amtrak’s “State of Good Repair Plan,” dated April 2017 and seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the fixes may be “intrusive at times and it will require operational and service changes” by Amtrak, as well as NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, which lease tracks and space from Amtrak.
Those operators are now reviewing the Amtrak plan, so details could change in coming days.
Some repairs will cause “significant service impact” this summer, requiring that certain tracks be out of service for 19 days from July 7 through July 25, according to the plan. Another project will last 25 days from Aug. 4 through Aug. 28, to replace timber, tracks, signals and concrete.
Switch and track replacements will also cause some sections to be out of service for 30 days at a time, in February 2018 and again in April and May of next year.
