Harrison residents who ride Metro-North into Grand Central Terminal got welcome news Monday: the 133-year-old Park Avenue Viaduct that carries their trains has been fully replaced, five years ahead of schedule and nearly $195 million under its revised budget.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the completion at a ceremony Monday, July 27, atop the viaduct near the 125th Street station in Harlem. She hammered ceremonial "golden clips" onto new rail alongside MTA Chairman Janno Lieber, Metro-North President Justin Vonashek, and MTA Construction & Development President Jamie Torres-Springer.

The viaduct, an elevated structure stretching from about East 103rd Street to East 132nd Street in Manhattan, carries 98% of all weekday Metro-North commuters into and out of the city. That includes every Harrison rider on the New Haven Line, which logged 82,450 average daily riders in fall 2024 and carried 32.07 million passengers last year, according to MTA ridership data.

What it means for Harrison riders

The project replaced 196 bridge structures and more than 12,600 feet of railroad without a single service shutdown into or out of Grand Central. Workers used custom-built gantry cranes to lift prefabricated bridge sections, each weighing about 190,000 pounds, into place on weekends while trains ran on adjacent tracks.

Metro-North maintained a 97% on-time performance rate during construction, above the railroad's 94% monthly goal, according to the MTA. For Harrison commuters, the rebuilt infrastructure eliminates the risk of emergency repairs that the viaduct's "major structural deficits," as Lieber described them, could have forced.

"Not one of them felt a moment of disruption," Hochul said at the ceremony. "Our team at MTA figured out a path forward to do the work just on weekends and shave off years and millions and millions of dollars."

Three years instead of eight

The project was originally conceived as an eight-year, $960 million effort when work began in late 2023. Using the gantry-crane approach, the MTA completed it in roughly three years at a final cost of $765 million, state officials said. The revised budget had been $833 million.

MTA Chairman Lieber said an inspection prior to the agency's most recent capital budget request revealed major structural deficits in the four-track viaduct. He attributed the speed to pushing contractors toward innovation.

What's still ahead

Some finishing work remains. At least one set of yellow gantry cranes will be visible overhead for a few more weeks, and the MTA says cleanup and remaining tasks will continue through 2027.

The viaduct is one of three components of Metro-North's "Grand Central Artery." The other two, a tunnel and a train shed beneath Park Avenue, still need to be rebuilt as part of the MTA's $70 billion capital plan for 2025-2029. Torres-Springer said lessons from the viaduct project will be applied to rehabilitating more than 30 miles of the system's 65 miles of elevated subway track.

New Haven Line ridership rose 11.8% from 2023 to 2024, according to MTA data. The project required no local Harrison approvals; residents with questions about remaining finishing work can contact the MTA at its Metro-North customer service line or through the agency's website.