MTA renames East Side Access project ‘Grand Central Madison’ new name for Long Island Rail Road Manhattan Terminal

The MTA has been building an $11 billion terminal for Long Island Rail Road trains under Grand Central Terminal for 15 years at this point. As construction wraps up and the agency plans intend to open it before the year’s over, it’s also decided to spruce up the decades-in-the-making terminal with a new name.

A stupendous name was given Tuesday to the Long Island Rail Road’s new center far below Manhattan.

The long-overdue East Side Access station — to open later this year — was dubbed “Grand Central Madison” in a nod to the storied Grand Central Terminal 10 stories overhead and the project’s access points a short block west under Madison Ave., Gov. Hochul announced.

At the point when commuters from Long Island land, they’ll show up at Grand Central Madison.

The new terminal, which sits in excess of 100 feet underground, has escalators and elevators that will carry riders to exits that run from 38th to 50th Street along Madison Avenue.

“So you can position yourself on the train so you get out, you go out right to the most convenient exit that takes you exactly where you’re going,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber said Tuesday at an announcement for the transit hub’s new name. “That’s a huge benefit for the people coming to the busiest part of our business district.”

Maybe the greatest advantage of the task, however, is it permits the MTA to run additional trains from Long Island into the city. The agency is at present chipping away at new timetables and plans to divide trains between Penn Station and Grand Central Madison. The agency anticipates that there should be a 40% increment in trains going to New York City generally speaking and a 58% increment in trains going to Manhattan.

Right now, there are 76 Long Island Railroad that prepares a day that goes into Manhattan during the morning commute. The agency reports that its studies demonstrate about the portion of the suburbanites would utilize Grand Central Madison. In this way, when the new terminal opens, the MTA plans to expand the complete number of trains during the morning race to 120.

Considering in other Long Island Railroad terminals and stations, similar to Atlantic Terminal and Hunterspoint Avenue in Long Island City, commuters can expect to see the number of trains a day arriving during the morning commute increasing from 113 to 159.

“People have been waiting a long time to have a world-class experience when they board the trains at their home on Long Island, when they come to the city they’ve long deserved a world-class experience,” Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday. “And they’ll get that.”

Despite the promised increase in train service, nearly 50% of Manhattan office workers said that they wouldn’t be coming into the office on an average weekday this fall, according to a recent survey, by the civic business organization Partnership for New York City.

The survey also found that 78% of businesses plan to continue having a hybrid office giving employees the flexibility to work from home.

Confronted with these numbers, Hochul was unphased.

“If you build it, they will come,” she said.

Hochul said the new name means to give “people a sense of hope.” But New Yorkers who have followed the project over the last 25 years might still associate it with cost overruns and blown schedules that have made East Side Access one of the most maligned American infrastructure projects so far this century.

The $11.1 billion projects kicked off in the late 1990s and encompass a new seven-block-long hall 15 stories beneath the street.

It likewise incorporates a new tunnel beneath the Hudson River that has been in the works since 1967, when New York voters approved $2.5 billion of bonds to pay for transportation improvements that were halted during the financial crisis of the 1970s.

Early Metropolitan Transportation Authority projections assessed the work would enclose by 2009 at an expense of $4.8 billion. The expense projection rose to $8.2 billion in 2012 and $10.2 billion in 2014. By 2018 it had arrived at its current $11.1 billion sticker price.

The project will open 13 years behind its original schedule. MTA Chairman Janno Lieber — who joined the agency as head of construction in 2018 — said he’s spent years fighting further delays to the project.

Hochul and Lieber say the new platforms beneath the ongoing Grand Central Terminal will increment ridership on the Long Island Rail Road, which carries about two-thirds as many daily riders as it did before the pandemic.

LIRR trains will still serve Penn Station once Grand Central Madison debuts — but some of the existing services will be redirected to the new hub on the East Side.

Hochul said the new train platforms would let the LIRR to expand the quantity of New York City-bound morning busy time trains from 113 to 158 and increment the quantity of outbound evening busy time trains from 98 to 115.

MTA officials later this week plan to release a list of proposed LIRR schedule changes for when the new station opens.

The boost to LIRR service may be threatened by imminent repairs to four East River train tunnels that are owned by Amtrak and used by LIRR trains to get into Manhattan.

Those tunnels were harmed in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy, and MTA authorities last year said the new station underneath Grand Central should open before they can be fixed.

In a debate similar to the one surrounding former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to fix the L train’s East River tunnel, Amtrak and MTA officials have for years argued over whether the latest tunnel repairs can be done on nights and weekends rather than requiring an around-the-clock shutdown that would hamper LIRR service.

Officials say this is the largest expansion of the LIRR in 112 years, and while there’s still no firm opening date, the governor says, “We’re on the cusp of saying it’s almost done.” It might be before the end of the year.