Plans were made in 1995 to bring LIRR service to East Midtown, and had resurfaced by the turn of the century. By that time, the LIRR was the busiest commuter railroad in the United States, with an average of 269,400 passengers each weekday in 1999. Penn Station, located on the West Side, was operating at capacity due to a complex track interlocking and limited capacity in the East River Tunnels. In 1999, the MTA proposed a $17 billion five-year capital budget, which included a $1.6 billion LIRR connection to a new station under Grand Central Terminal, to be built as part of a project called East Side Access. The project's final environmental impact assessment (FEIS) was released in March 2001. Two months later, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) gave a favorable "Record of Decision", a mark of approval, to East Side Access after reviewing the project's FEIS. The September 11 attacks underscored the need to bring LIRR service to Grand Central. As LIRR president Kenneth J. Bauer stated, "If something happened at the East River tunnel, you wouldn't be able to run trains to Penn Station." In 2002, Congress passed a bill that allocated $132 million for infrastructure projects in New York State, of which $14.7 million was to go toward funding East Side Access. Approval of a final design for East Side Access was granted in 2002, and the first properties for East Side Access were acquired in 2003.