Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the renovation of New York City’s Penn Station will be a top priority for the Trump administration.

Department of Transportation officials stated that the massive overhaul, which the Trump administration took over from the state of New York, is expected to begin by the end of 2027.

Duffy said the project will move at the “speed of Trump.”

“How bad is New York Penn Station? The clocks don’t even work! Enough is enough,” Duffy said.

“Our new timeline for a transformed Penn Station will ensure New York City has a world-class transit hub. Building at the SPEED OF TRUMP,” he continued.

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US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled a speedy new timeline for transforming the much-hated transit hub after previous timelines had been vague and promised to finish in “four to five years” from its start.

“We are going to move at the speed of Trump,” Duffy said, as he left the door open to renaming the hub in the president’s honor.

“This is not going to be a 20-, 30-year project. This is not about a backroom thinking about how we can spend money and develop plans that never deliver. This is actually about how do we move this more quickly and more beautifully through the process.”

The timeline will be turbo-charged with a $43 million grant to Amtrak, which is now in charge of overhauling dank and depressing Penn Station, Duffy said.

Trump effectively fired the MTA from the project in April, putting the feds in charge after years of stops and starts by the state-run agency.

The move put two parallel Penn Station projects under the same umbrella — one to reconstruct the crumbling building and another to expand its rail capacity.

“We are going to make Union & Penn Station BEAUTIFUL again. We are going to make transit SAFE again,” Duffy said.

THE CITY shared further details:

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Federal officials said they will begin accepting proposals in October for the station’s redevelopment and aim to start construction by the end of 2027.

Duffy defended the federal government’s move to yank control of the long-planned Penn Station overhaul from the state, saying he didn’t believe New York could pull off the transformation of a transit hub that he said is a Trump priority.

“The president cares, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” said Duffy, who is already in a legal battle with Hochul and the MTA over congestion pricing. “This project is not the easiest of projects to undertake.

“This is a complicated project, which is probably why there’s been a lot of conversations about it, a lot of drawings about it and nothing has ever happened.”

In recent years, the MTA has led renovations inside Penn Station’s lower-level concourse, such as linking the Seventh and Eighth avenue subway lines with the Long Island Rail Road via a bright retail corridor. New showpiece entrances and accessibility upgrades have been added, as well.

Hochul ceded New York’s control of the project last spring, saying in a statement Wednesday that one of the first things she told Trump on his return to the presidency in January was that New York needs “the beautiful Penn Station it deserves.”

 

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