Six months after taking control of the long-delayed overhaul of Pennsylvania Station in New York City, the Trump administration put out a call on Thursday for ideas on how to begin transforming the transit hub in about two years.
The federal Department of Transportation said it was seeking imaginative proposals for turning the dreary station in Midtown Manhattan, the busiest transportation center in North America, into a world-class gateway to the city. The winning bid would have to involve removing an entire level of the underground station to allow some natural light to reach the main concourse, an Amtrak official said.
The fate of Madison Square Garden, the entertainment arena that has sat on top of the station for more than 50 years, is unclear. Andy Byford, the Amtrak official overseeing the project, has said that proposals may call for relocating the Garden or leaving it in place.
Mr. Byford has not said how much the station’s renovation might cost, who would pay for it or how long it might take. He said he was hoping to receive credible proposals that placed an emphasis on fiscal responsibility in the handling of any public funds.
New York State had committed $1.3 billion toward a rebuilding plan that was estimated to cost about $7 billion, but Gov. Kathy Hochul withdrew that commitment when the Trump administration wrested control of the project in April.
“This will be one of the biggest and most significant construction projects in U.S. history, and we want the most skilled and knowledgeable partners to help make it a success,” said Mr. Byford, a special adviser to Amtrak’s board of directors, in a prepared statement. “By working with the private sector, we will be working with advisers who focus on the project’s goals while minimizing costs for taxpayers.”
Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, is managing the project because it owns Penn Station, as well as the rail corridor that runs through it from Washington, D.C., to Boston. But the biggest users of the station are two state-run transportation agencies, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and NJ Transit.
More than 600,000 people pass through the station on trains and subways on a typical weekday. That is about three times as many riders as the transit hub was built to handle when it opened in the 1960s, after the original Penn Station was demolished to make room for the Garden and an office tower.
Converting the station’s concourse into a single level without disrupting the daily commute would be a big challenge, said Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association, which studies transportation in the New York City area.
“You’re going to literally be renovating this station and above you the Garden is going to be hosting basketball and hockey games and below you the trains are going to be running,” said Mr. Wright, whose group has been paid by Amtrak to support infrastructure improvements in the region. “Can you imagine?”
But Mr. Wright said he believed that Mr. Byford could meet his goal of beginning work on the renovation before the end of 2027 if federal officials could arrange the necessary funding and streamline the process of reviewing the project’s environmental effects.
Amtrak announced on Thursday that it had chosen AKRF as its environmental consultant on the project. It also named KPMG as its financial adviser and Hunton Andrews Kurth as its legal adviser.
Transportation officials said they did not foresee the Trump administration’s suspension of funding for the building of new rail tracks under the Hudson River, a project known as Gateway, to affect the schedule for transforming Penn Station. They said he expected to be ready to recommend one of the renovation proposals to Amtrak’s board by May and then, if approved, present it to Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary.
In a prepared statement, Mr. Duffy said: “We’re rebuilding Penn Station on Trump Time and we are tapping our partners in the private sector to make it happen on time and on budget.”
“I’m confident we’ll bring together the greatest minds to create an unmatched symbol of American architecture and infrastructure for visitors and daily commuters to enjoy for decades to come,” he said.
Federal officials also have begun studying how to optimize train traffic in and out of Penn Station, in two parts.
The first, scheduled to take six months, will look for improvements to the tracks, platforms and other infrastructure at the station that could be incorporated into the winning proposal for the renovation.
The second, which could take an additional year, would study the prospects for having commuter trains from Long Island and New Jersey run through the station and on to destinations in the suburbs, instead of turning around in the city as they do now. Mr. Byford is an enthusiastic support of this practice, which is known as through-running.
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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