New York’s Office Market Could Win Big With Andy Byford

In an era when proximity to convenient mass transit is by itself a major office amenity, the decision to allow Amtrak executive Andy Byford to lead Penn Station’s long-delayed redevelopment could not have arrived at a more portentous time for New York commercial real estate. 

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Byford’s appointment on May 27, and then later that week filmed himself touring the grimy corridors of the Midtown Manhattan transit hub with his sleeves rolled up and the former New York City Transit Authority president by his side.

“We’re talking about a rebuild of Penn Station,” Duffy said in the video. “This project should have been done 20 years ago and it hasn’t. Donald Trump cares about it. So what do we do? We brought in Andy, the ‘Train Daddy,’ to help us actually manage this project.”

Byford cheerfully responded that Penn Station’s 600,000 daily commuters deserved a train station that reflected the majesty of the global capital.

“Look at it, it’s terrible. This is not worthy of the city of New York. This is not worthy of the U.S.,” he said. “We have a golden opportunity under your leadership and under President Trump’s leadership to transform this place and bring something truly iconic back to New York.”

If there is one thing that New York’s business titans, progressive transit advocates and the MAGA right can agree on, it’s that Penn Station is a national embarrassment long overdue for renovation. And, if there is one person who they all might agree could fix the crumbling transit hub, it is the British transportation leader whose competence and follow through earned the moniker “Train Daddy” from terminally online trainspotters.

Byford is all too familiar with New York’s transit network and certainly knows the stakes. After joining the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2018, Byford steered city subways out of the “Summer of Hell” by ensuring trains ran on time, modernizing signals and train maintenance, and defending congestion pricing as the best way to fund future capital projects.

But he repeatedly clashed with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo over control of the system’s signal upgrades and the best way to repair the Canarsie tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn that had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Byford wanted to close the L train for 15 months, but Cuomo quashed his restoration plan at the last minute. After learning his job duties would be reduced, Byford left the agency in February 2020.

Now he’ll be working with the same personalities he encountered five years ago while managing the busiest train station in the Western Hemisphere. 

Cuomo, who managed the transformation of Moynihan Train Hall before resigning from office in 2021 over allegations of sexual harassment, is a favorite to become the city’s next mayor. Janno Lieber, Cuomo’s pick to run the MTA who manages the rail lines for the largest group of commuters who use Penn Station, has been fixing up the 33rd Street Concourse for Long Island Rail Road riders. (John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations, said of bringing in Byford: “We look forward to working with Andy Byford, who understands the importance of mass transit and was a strong supporter throughout our battle to implement congestion pricing in New York.”)

Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth and Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation CEO James Dolan control billions of dollars of real estate assets above and around Penn Station’s footprint and will have a say in any reconstruction plan. (Vornado declined to comment, while MSG did not respond to questions.) So will New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. And President Trump.

That may be the easy part. Byford will be tasked with making Amtrak’s schedules and operations safer and more efficient while balancing the needs of Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit commuters, increasing Penn’s concourse capacity, and planning for future passenger growth that would come when the construction of the Gateway tunnel project beneath the Hudson River is completed by 2038. In the meantime, he will have to start the process for a cost-efficient redevelopment plan that achieves some measure of consensus among the station’s various stakeholders.

“There are so many complex issues that are connected, and one of the questions when Andy comes into this role is will it be a narrowly defined position to move forward with the renovation or a more broadly defined one, since that renovation touches on all the issues,” said Tom Wright, Regional Plan Association (RPA) executive director. “I don’t think anyone knows.”

Byford would be wise to focus on day-to-day service. Amtrak’s on-time performance for the Northeast Corridor fell from 87 percent in the second quarter of 2023 to 74 percent by the third quarter of 2024, records show. That was before a series of incidents involving overhead wires that fell onto the tracks in December and repeated signal power issues at Penn Station exacerbated train delays to New Jersey. Last month, Amtrak workers didn’t finish their overnight repair work outside an East River tunnel, which disrupted Long Island commuters’ morning rush.

If Byford can open the bottleneck by reducing how long trains dwell in Penn Station and thereby ensuring they keep to their schedules, he will win over even more fans, advocates say.

“We’ve been chasing a physical resurrection of Penn Station while what we should be chasing is much better operations, which would save people time,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance. “What you want to do is get in and out. We don’t want three times as many bars or fancy retail. Transit is about movement. It’s not about staying still.”

That movement is proving a financial boon. The highest office asking rents in Manhattan since 2020 — indeed, in the city’s history in some cases — are near mass transit hubs such as Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. This is partly because commercial real estate executives routinely tout convenient commutes as a major draw in getting existing employees back to the office and in recruiting new talent. 

Some advocates hope Byford would revitalize through-running, an operational change that would allow trains to continue through the region on the same line instead of stopping at a transit hub and returning to their origin. He has spoken favorably about the advantages of combining commuter service to create one-seat rides between New Jersey and Long Island and eventually the Hudson Valley, changes likely to improve the region’s economic vitality. Last month, Amtrak proposed adding service to Ronkonkoma, Hicksville and Jamaica, which would connect Long Island to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., by 2030.

Liam Blank, an urban mobility consultant and chair of the nonprofit City Club, believes that through-running would connect New York’s suburbs more easily, enable more trains to run through Penn Station, and cut down on empty trains idling in the West Side and Sunnyside railyards.

“Andy Byford’s opportunity is to take internal admissions of current limitations and champion an operational model that finally prioritizes moving passengers intelligently across the region, rather than perpetuating a system so reliant on shuffling empty trains,” Blank said. “With the feds now mandating a fresh look at it, having him at the helm drastically improves the odds it gets a fair, hard-nosed evaluation.”

An even greater challenge will be determining the best way to increase the capacity of Penn Station without shutting it down. One proposal involves removing the station’s B level and creating a two-level station hall with higher ceilings. Another idea with less consensus involves removing Madison Square Garden’s 5,000-seat theater to create a new entrance on Eighth Avenue and a larger internal loading dock for the Garden’s 19,500-seat main arena that would remove truck traffic from the neighborhood.

Then there are far more controversial proposals, such as relocating Madison Square Garden across the street or demolishing the block south of 31st Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues to make way for the station’s southward expansion.

The best move that Byford can make is to start the process for a new master plan this year and resolve the many competing visions for the site. Otherwise, the station won’t be able to accommodate trains from the Gateway tunnel beneath the Hudson, stymieing growth for generations.

“Hopefully by the end of this year there is a consensus over how Penn Station will be improved, which team will do it, how much it will cost, and that there’s buy-in from the major parties,” RPA’s Wright said. “It would be horrible if we made this whole agreement and the team said, ‘We can no longer deliver on this station.’ We want to avoid those kinds of pitfalls.”