(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Devlin Barrett on July 29.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A House committee has quietly stripped away $40 million intended to pay for moving Pennsylvania Station’s train service into the historic James A. Farley post office building, allotting the money instead to the East Side Access project.
The federal funding, which has sat unused for several years while officials worked to build up a train station in the historic Farley building across Eighth Avenue, was originally obtained by the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Moynihan worked for years to create a huge rail hub inside a more architecturally impressive building than the basement under Madison Square Garden, where Penn Station is now located.
Just before leaving Washington last week, the House Appropriations Committee approved an annual budget that rescinds $40 million set aside by Moynihan in 2000 to pay for moving Amtrak and other rail lines into the Farley building.
The money instead would go to building a rail link connecting the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, a plan usually referred to as East Side Access.
Moynihan’s daughter, Maura Moynihan, said she was angry about the planned switch.
“As my father said, this project is a big fat white porpoise in a sea of sharks,” she said.
Her father “spent over a decade fighting for this day in and day out, and to see it neglected and squandered means the people of New York are being cheated,” she said.
The Moynihan Station project has also encountered resistance from Amtrak, the nation’s financially precarious passenger rail service.
Amtrak owns its site at Penn Station, but would be expected to pay millions of dollars a year in rent at the Farley building.
The Empire State Development Corporation insisted Thursday the project is moving forward, having just initiated the bidding process for work at the Farley building, with or without Amtrak’s support.
“The Moynihan project is going forward, and it has the support of the (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and New Jersey Transit,” said ESDC spokeswoman Deborah Wetzel.
“We feel it’s an important project to New York in terms of jobs and the economy of the region,” she said.
It was not clear Thursday who in the House was responsible for redirecting the funds from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal.
The bill still awaits a full House vote, and conference negotiations between the House and Senate, giving New York officials time to lobby on behalf of the Moynihan project.
A deal for the state to buy the post office and convert it into a transit hub was announced in October 2002. At the time, officials said the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had committed $145 million to buy the building, and that the rest of the money needed for the project would come from state bonds, Amtrak, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and private sources.
Tony Bullock, a former chief of staff to the senator, said removing even relatively small amounts of money from the project is dangerous.
“Money for this project is a quilt, and if you take away one piece of it, then nothing can happen,” Bullock said.