A long‑running turf war between Amtrak and the MTA’s Metro‑North Railroad is spilling onto the tracks, with Amtrak now accusing Metro‑North of slowing down millions of commuters as leverage in a contractual fight.
In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday night, Amtrak says Metro‑North has spent the last two months blocking its non‑passenger trains — trains that do test runs, safety inspection trips and equipment moves — on the Hudson and New Haven Lines, choking off what Amtrak describes as essential work that keeps passenger-filled trains moving on time.
“Their actions are violating agreements we’ve had in place for more than 35 years, causing escalating harm to Amtrak’s operations, undermining safety‑critical rail activity, disrupting service needed by millions of passengers, and putting the reliability of intercity rail service at risk,” an Amtrak spokesperson said Thursday.
Amtrak warned that if the blockade continues while the two sides slog through arbitration, riders will pay the price.
Riders could see more delays and cancellations as locomotives and cars get stranded on the wrong side of Metro‑North’s territory, leaving Amtrak without enough equipment in the right places to maintain its timetable, according to Amtrak.
The rollout of Amtrak’s new NextGen Acela fleet is also at stake because blocked test runs over Metro‑North’s tracks threaten to delay the new high-speed trains from entering service even as older Acelas age out, Amtrak said.
In court docs, Amtrak cast the damage as reputational, arguing that once passengers give up on its reliability and switch to cars or planes, it may not be easy to win them back.
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Metro-North’s block of Amtrak’s non-passenger trains lands on the heels of Amtrak quietly blocking a Metro‑North plan to extend service from Poughkeepsie to Albany after the MTA floated running its own Empire Service trains after Amtrak cut service amid construction.
The two train companies fought other skirmishes last year as well.
Last fall, Amtrak’s president blamed the MTA’s “wounded pride” for a public blame game over years‑long delays to the $2.9 billion Penn Station Access project, after MTA officials pinned the holdup on Amtrak’s failure to provide work windows and staff.
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The pair also clashed last year over Amtrak’s plan to close one of four century‑old East River tunnel tracks for more than a year of repairs. Amtrak engineers warned the crumbling, salt‑soaked tunnel needed a full shutdown, while MTA leaders blasted the scheme as a recipe for “untenable” train delays.
The MTA bizarrely responded to the lawsuit by blaming the federal government.
“It’s not clear who in the federal government is directing Amtrak’s lawyers to create distractions from the real issue — getting Bronxites the service they deserve,” said John J. McCarthy, MTA chief for policy and external relations.
