- Serge

You are absolutely right. Moynihan Station is a waste for the money it would cost. People who use train stations use them to catch trains – not to hang around and marvel at the architecture. It’s too far west from the subways to be useful to most of the passengers who use Penn. However the biggest waste of a project of all time has got to be ARC in its current form – an absolute underutilized dead end. Even some of the better aspects of the project such as the Herald Sq subway access wouild only be available for ARC users.

Firstly, I don’t know where you are getting your ridership figures for Penn. The latest brochure for ESA states LIRR ridership is 230,000 per day and this fact sheet for ARC puts NJT ridership at 170,000 per day. This of course does not include Amtrak Ridership.

Secondly, having just got back from Paris and used Chatelet many times, I can tell you you can’t compare its tracks to those of Penn’s. One of the reasons why Penn is so crowded is due to congestion on the platforms which were not designed for the level of commuter service, especially on the NJ (tracks 1-4) and through tracks. There is barely enough room on a platform for a single train load, never mind for riders on the other track for the platform and people waiting for a train. The vertical circulation elements (escalators and stairs) are only 1 to 2 people wide. This can make the trip from the train to the concourse sometimes take 3 to 4 minutes.

Chatelet is different (as it was designed from the beginning as a rapid transit station). The platform are probably 3-4 times as wide and the same is true for the vertical circulation elements. Because of this, boarding and alighting is much faster and passengers doing both activities can share the same space relatively easily.

Through routing will not solve the platform congestion / vertical circulation problem. If you take a look at the plans for ARC, these problems are addressed for the NYPSE with its wide platforms and staircases/escalators to the Mezzanine.

Thus, those arriving from the ARC tunnel, this so-called doubled capacity, will have to walk three whole city blocks under ground to exit out of the Farley Building, or the Moynihan Station which is Amtrack.

Bad Urban planning from the start. They should move Madison Square Garden into the Annex of the Farley Post Office and Rebuild Penn on Site and call that Moynihans Station. It makes no sense because the Farley Post Office is a Landmark, I have my P.O. box there, it is a landmark and was dedicated via H. Res. 368 1982 to Jim Farley, that is regardless of whatever station they build. It is illegal to remove Farleys name from the Landmark, violates NHPA 1966 section 106
So the polls will call it Moynihan then you will forget about Farley who was for term limits and the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution Morons.

I’m not sure about Shinjuku. Mind you, both Shinjuku and Chatelet-Les Halles have been criticized for being messy and crowded. I’m sure New Yorkers who visit them will say they’re like Penn but worse. But they work.

They’re also both right that the stub-end plans for the new NJ Transit terminal are shamefully short-sighted.

“The rest of New Yorkers, who are used to having similar density levels to those of Tokyo, should know better.”
but, wait, you just said something else.

“21-track Penn Station gets 300,000 riders per weekday, compared with 500,000 for 6-track Chatelet-Les Halles, and 2.8 million per day (not weekday) for 29-track Shinjuku Station.”
what is the square-footage of those stations? honest question.