The Infrastructure Podcast: Episode 161

Guest: Andy Byford, Special Advisor to the Board of Directors, Amtrak

New York's Penn Station

This special episode was recorded live in front of delegates at the recent Transforming Infrastructure Performance Summit in New York – the latest in this series of global events supported by software giant Bentley Systems and the UK Government.

My guest is Andy Byford, Special Advisor to the Board of Directors at Amtrak, former London Transport Commissioner, and the man in charge of the massive multi-billion dollar transformation of New York’s vast Penn Station, the busiest rail hub in the Western Hemisphere. 

The Station sits on Seventh Avenue in the heart of Manhattan alongside the Maddison Square Garden sports and concert venue. It serves hundreds of thousands of passengers each day, via numerous the MTA subway lines and the Long lsland Railroad. Yet for decades it has struggled under the weight of aging assets, fragmented governance, and chronic underinvestment. 

The result has been a station that works hard, but not well enough for the city, the region, or the nation it serves.

But that is now beginning to change. Under the expert eye of Andy - AKA the "Train Daddy" - the Penn Station Transformation intends to redefine what a modern, customer-focused, high-capacity rail hub can look like in the heart of one of the world’s densest urban environments. 

And after a career running London’s Transport network, and before that, transportation in Sydney, Toronto and New York, he is the man that knows what passengers – and crucially what politicians want from this kind of station transformation.

I kicked off by getting to grips with this vast and highly political project - and asking what world class actually looks like?

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