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Good news for anyone who’s spent the past year rage-refreshing Amtrak prices or standing in a Penn Station aisle clutching a “sold out” notification: full Empire Service between New York City and Albany is officially coming back.
Beginning in early March, Amtrak will restore all suspended and combined Empire Service trains between New York Penn Station and Albany-Rensselaer—months earlier than originally expected. The decision will bring back three daily round-trip trains that vanished last year and marks a rare commuter win in a stretch otherwise defined by tunnel repairs and transit headaches.
So why did service disappear in the first place? Blame the East River Tunnel.
Amtrak is midway through a massive, three-year rehabilitation of the century-old tunnels that connect Penn Station to Queens, repairing damage that dates all the way back to Superstorm Sandy in 2012. When construction ramped up last spring, Amtrak cut Empire Service frequency to free up tunnel capacity, leaving fewer seats, fuller trains and fares that could easily sail past $100 one way.
That decision didn’t go over well in Albany.
Governor Kathy Hochul pushed back hard, arguing that upstate and Hudson Valley riders shouldn’t shoulder the brunt of a regional infrastructure project. On Tuesday, she announced that Amtrak has agreed not only to restore service but also to maintain full Empire Service for the duration of the tunnel work and beyond.
“We will soon be able to offer more Empire Service capacity than existed even before the tunnel work began,” Hochul said, calling the early restoration a “big win for riders.”
There’s another key detail for anyone who books last-minute: Amtrak has committed in writing to keeping its $99 fare cap between Albany and NYC for the remainder of the tunnel project. Capacity is also increasing, thanks to a quiet but meaningful swap: business-class cars are being replaced with higher-seat coach cars, allowing more tickets to be sold on each train.
The catch, however, is that this revival also kills a popular backup plan. With Empire Service back, Amtrak has withdrawn its approval for a temporary Metro-North extension to Albany—a proposed $40 Grand Central-to-Albany route that briefly felt like a commuter fever dream. For now, Metro-North service will continue to end at Poughkeepsie.
Still, for the roughly 2 million riders who use Empire Service each year (and helped it hit record ridership in 2024), the decision means more trains, more seats and fewer wallet-wrecking surprises. Sometimes, the rails actually deliver.