Amtrak will announce the summer service plan for New York Penn Station next week, with an early estimate suggesting that about 25 percent of the trains running in and out of the station daily could be cancelled.
Amtrak Chief Executive Wick Moorman, speaking to reporters Thursday after testifying before a New York state Assembly committee, said about 75 percent of current train volume would run during the shutdown.
With 1,300 Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit trains coming in and out of the station daily, that would imply roughly 325 trains a day would be cancelled between the three rail services.
The railroad's chief also acknowledged that even with weeks of work this summer, another outage will still be required sometime in 2018 to finish rehab projects at the aging station.
The closures follow a series of derailments and service problems over the last two months.
"We sincerely apologize for the disruptions caused by these events," Moorman said in his opening remarks to the committee, reiterating that Amtrak has conducted extensive inspections of the station's tracks since.
"They highlight the vulnerability and fragility of Penn Station," he said.
Moorman told the committee that crews will be working around the clock during the outage periods, and that the number of tracks taken out of service will vary depending on the time of day.
But he said the timing of next year's outage is still up in the air.
