Amtrak honchos officially showed off renderings for President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s renovation of Penn Station on Monday, but left unsaid amid the unveiling of pretty pictures was the only aspect of the Penn Station redevelopment that matters: How much will it cost, and who’s paying?

One possible answer: Tenant railroads Amtrak, the MTA and New Jersey Transit. According to the development company vice president Peter Cipriano (who was a senior adviser to the U.S. DOT during President Trump’s first term), those tenants might have to pony up “availability payments” to cover a share of the project costs.

“Presumably there will be some level of availability payment at the end of the road on this project, like Amtrak has on 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” the Halmar executive told reporters.

This type of payment scheme — which the railroads will almost certainly pass on to their riders — was the linchpin of the Halmar/ASTM plan that Cipriano’s team pitched the MTA in 2023. That plan would have involved Halmar and its parent company ASTM funding the renovation upfront, then collecting $250 million per year over 50 years from each over the three tenant railroads.

But neither Cipriano nor Andy Byford, Amtrak’s special adviser for Penn Station, would put a pricetag or timeline on the “availability payments,” reports Dave Colon for Streetsblog NYC.

Read more about the presser — and check out the rest of today’s news — at the links below.

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