HARRISON -- For Timothy Braddock, a media company engineer waiting for a train to New York at the Harrison PATH station, the sooner the 80-year-old station is scrapped for a planned $256 million replacement the better.

"They need to blow it up," joked Braddock, 63, who had driven to the station from his Long Valley home and left his car in an adjacent parking deck, before climbing the stairs to the PATH platform. "It's old. The T.V.'s don't work - the PATH T.V's, the schedules, the weather. There's no handicap access. How do you get up to the platforms if you can't walk up the stairs? I've helped at least five or six women up the stairs with big (baby) carriages."

The Port Authority has some good news and some bad news for Braddock and the station's other 6,700 weekday commuters, who board trains on platforms directly above Frank Rogers Boulevard, the main drag of this former industrial powerhouse now trying to reinvent itself as a Manhattan bedroom community with the PATH stop's help.

Gov. Chris Christie, who shares control of the Port Authority with the governor of New York, announced a $256 million plan for a new Harrison PATH station in August 2013. (Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey Journal)

The good news is the temporary platform extension on the western end of the Newark-bound side will open on Wednesday, followed as soon as next week by the opening of the New York-bound extension. The project milestone, which will mean commuters should turn right instead of left to head for the parking deck after arriving in Harrison, will allow demolition of the eastern end of the two platforms and construction of an airy glass and steel stationhouse - with an elevator. The foundation of the new station is already in place, an in-ground concrete honey comb at the northeast corner of the intersection formed by Rogers Boulevard and the railroad overpass.

The bad news is that there could be a delay in the overall project's completion date, originally set for 2017, then tentatively for 2018, and now uncertain thanks to a snag in negotiations to renew a right-of-way agreement with Amtrak, said Ellen Thomsen, the Harrison Station project manager for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, a division of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor right-of-way that PATH's two tracks use, and has plans of to add a fourth track to the three it already operates, Thomsen said. Amtrak's concern, she said, is that work on the Harrison Station could interfere with Amtrak's plans.

"There's always a concern in a railroad when somebody is working next to you or close to you," Thomsen said.

The Harrison PATH Station, built in 1936 at the southwest corner of the intersection formed by Frank Rogers Boulevard and the railroad overpass that supports tracks used by Amtrak, NJ Transit and PATH trains. (John Munson | NJ Advance Media)

Thomsen said work on the new PATH station will continue even without a renewed right-of-way agreement, adding that she along with other PATH and Port Authority officials were "very confident" that a deal with Amtrak will be reached eventually.

An Amtrak spokesman, Craig Schulz, said he could not immediately comment on the agreement, which Amtrak inherited upon its creation in 1971 from the old Pennsylvania Railroad.

Spend some time below the rusting, paint-chipped awnings of the Harrison platform, and you can see why officials might be concerned about the impact construction work or a new station might have on the busy tracks running above Rogers Boulevard. Several PATH, Amtrak and double-decker NJ Transit trains rolled through the station in the span of a few minutes, sometimes simultaneously, en route to or from Newark Penn Station, which is just across the Passaic River, over Amtrak's vertical-lift Dock Bridge.

The PATH station's proximity to the flood-prone Passaic has also complicated the project, which was designed before Hurricane Sandy. The storm caused over a billion dollars in damage to the PATH system and prompted modifications to the Harrison project to guard against a similar storm in the future, Thomsen said.

Apart from the Amtrak and flooding issues, the Harrison station project has been the subject of political controversy. The project was authorized in March 2012, by a vote of the Port Authority Board of Commissioners, led by then-Chairman David Samson. The vote came after a client of his law firm, the former Wolff & Samson, had proposed turning an abandoned warehouse into luxury apartments only blocks from the station.

After reports of the circumstances , the Port Authority acknowledged in an April 7 bond prospectus that it had received a request from the New Jersey State Ethics Commission for documents related to commissioners' conflict of interest and recusal policies, plus resolutions of approval for projects including the Harrison PATH station.

The Port Authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Gabriella Gonzales eagerly awaits the new station. Gonzales, a 40-year-old school teacher who walks the few blocks to the station from her Harrison apartment then takes the PATH to work in Jersey City, said she was dazzled by renderings of the ultramodern station when plans were announced in 2013.

"I'm happy about that," said Gonzales. "I saw a picture and the station is so fancy."

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow hin on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.