4 New Metro-North Stations To Be Built In Bronx By 2025 At $1.58B

BRONX, NY — Bronx residents looking to hop a ride on the Metro-North railroad line either heading north to Connecticut or to Penn Station will be able to do so by 2025.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that the Bronx will be home to four new commuter MTA stations at a cost of $1.58 billion.

“This is not a proposal, this is not a dream, this is not a ‘we’re gonna try, we’re gonna hope, we have an idea,’” Cuomo said Thursday. “…This is happening and it’s happening now.”

He added: “Remember this day because it’s going to be transformative for these communities…the entire Bronx, the entire region.”

Cuomo said state, federal and Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have allocated the funds for the completion of four train stations in the Bronx.

The new stations will reduce the time from Co-op City to Penn Station from its current time of 75 minutes to 25 minutes while the commute from Hunts Point to Penn Station will be cut from 45 minutes to 16, the governor said.

Heading north, commuters who work in Connecticut will be able to reach Stamford in about 35 minutes, officials said.

In addition to Co-op City and Hunts Point, stations will also be constructed at Morris Park and New Parkchester/Van Nest Station – all of which will provide service to 30,000 commuters, Cuomo said.

The new service will include 160 trains per day along the line, which is five times the amount of trains Amtrak currently offers. The contract for the project will be awarded next year with completion expected in the next four years.

Cuomo first proposed the project in his 2014 State of the State address and dedicated $250 million to it in 2015, according to a news release. The project will bring four fully accessible Metro-North stations that will serve an extension of the New Haven Line, offering rail commutation options in the east Bronx to Midtown Manhattan as well as points in Westchester County and Connecticut.

Cuomo also said that Penn Station will also be expanded and renovated under the plan to make it a world-class transportation facility and “a place you actually want to end up.”

Tunnels along the East River, which are owned by Amtrak, would require some repairs before access to the line by Bronx residents could begin, officials said Thursday. Officials said that they have urged Amtrak officials to begin the renovations, which have been on hold since Superstorm Sandy.

Metro-North trains will use a rail line owned by Amtrak that has long been used by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor trains, which travel through the area without stopping. This project will upgrade the line and update its infrastructure systems at the same time that it brings local MTA service to the line for the first time, according to the news release.

The last Metro-North station to be newly built where none had been before was also in the Bronx, at Yankees-E. 153rd Street, which opened on May 23, 2009.

Bronx Borough president Ruben Diaz praised the announcement, saying it was a sign that Cuomo believes in the Bronx rather than being ignored as he said was the case in the past. Diaz said that the coronavirus pandemic slowed the proposal down to add stations to the Bronx, but that progress kept being made over the past year.

Diaz said that the addition of the new stations will create thousands of jobs, new housing and give a shot in the arm to the borough’s economic development plans.

“This is something that gives us hope,” Diaz said Thursday.