The Penn Station Access project — four new Metro-North stops in the East Bronx, including Co-op City — broke ground in December 2022 and carried a 2027 opening target. That date has slipped, caught in an escalating dispute between the MTA and Amtrak over who can use whose tracks and who pays for the damage.

Construction on the platform at Erskine Place and De Reimer Avenue, tucked under Interstate 95 in Co-op City, has been visible since 2022. That station — one of four new Metro-North stops the MTA is building along Amtrak's Hell Gate Line in the East Bronx — was supposed to put Co-op City riders at Penn Station by 2027. It won't.

Streetsblog NYC referred to Penn Station Access as "the now-delayed Penn Access Project" in a May 26 report on the deteriorating relationship between the MTA and Amtrak, the federal rail agency that owns the Hell Gate Line tracks Metro-North needs to reach Penn Station. Without a working operating agreement between the two agencies, the new service has nowhere to run.

The dispute escalated publicly this year. Amtrak's new Acela trainsets damaged overhead wires on the New Haven Line in January; Amtrak trains were also implicated in fires at Penn Station in May. The MTA blocked Amtrak from using Metro-North tracks for non-revenue test and repositioning runs. Amtrak sued in April, arguing that 1991 access agreements guaranteed it the right. On May 22, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed Amtrak's bid for an injunction.

The four stations — Hunts Point, Parkchester/Van Nest, Morris Park, and Co-op City — are part of a $2.5 billion project that broke ground in December 2022 under a 63-month design-build contract. The MTA owns the stations; Amtrak owns the right-of-way between them and Penn Station. That dependency is, at the moment, the problem.

No revised opening date has been announced. Co-op City, home to roughly 55,000 residents and one of the longest bus-to-subway commutes in the outer Bronx, keeps waiting.