Many have tried to repair Penn station. Can Trump do the work?

New York political leaders have been promoting a recast for Pennsylvania station in Manhattan for so long that the saga began to look like the Arthurian legend of the stone sword.

One by one, the officials tried to carry out ambitious renovation patterns, and one by one, they failed.

On Thursday, President Trump’s transport secretary Sean P. Duffy on Thursday joined the list. Affirming federal control of the station in a surprise announcement, he promised to transform it into a safe and clean station which “reflects the American size”.

In all years of political quarrels, consensus construction and master’s planning, the many obstacles to a new Penn station have never been disputed so directly by the power of a president. No one has tried strong arms tactics that defined Mr. Trump’s second term for the first term.

Now, Mr. Trump’s methods – aggressive requirements, intimidation, boastful, contempt for legal and bureaucratic structures – will be put to the test against a problem that has been mired for years in a tangle of political pressures and contradictory priorities.

Transport experts claim that in normal circumstances, an in -depth renovation of the most popular transit center in the country, which serves three different railways, would most likely take several billion dollars. It is not China, where a station can be improved apparently overnight, they say.