While my daily focus here encompasses New York City Transit and MTA projects, to the west of Manhattan, a new rail tunnel is under construction. The Port Authority’s ARC Tunnel, spurred on by a significant stimulus investment, is slowing making its way toward Midtown Manhattan. The current plans are to build a significant extension to Penn Station, but the reality is that New York City needs Moynihan Station with its increased capacity and better pedestrian flow. To that end, Bloomberg Media’s architecture critic James S. Russell explored the shortcomings of Penn Station and the need for a better solution to the city’s rail access problem. Check it out. It’s well worth the read.
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The author is visionary. But once he speaks of razing a block’s worth of unsightly buildings and bringing in daylight to the station, images of the corner of Fulton St. and Broadway come to mind.
A train station is supposed to be a huge civic gathering space, like an enclosed plaza with a side purpose. Of course, this is nearly impossible to achieve with a giant stadium and office building currently there. Maybe if they wait long enough, it will make sense to just tear it down…
the author calls it “sordid penn station”. he’s right. it’s gross. i go now to flatbush, or even LIC if i can swing it, to do my LIRR riding (being in yorkville made this decision a little eaasier, i can do it all from the lex).
The author is visionary. But once he speaks of razing a block’s worth of unsightly buildings and bringing in daylight to the station, images of the corner of Fulton St. and Broadway come to mind.
That’s the beauty of being an architecture critic. You don’t have to be practical.
Ever since I got my first job out of college in 07 I have been commuting from Long Island daily. Everyone I talk to about it gets an earful from me about how much penn sucks and how amazing the original was, they think im crazy. The bottom line is they are never EVER going to fix that mess of a station, heck I dont even go there anymore as its quicker for me to get to work via flatbush (which is being renovated and the work seems to be almost finished).
Once the LIRR starts going into its new station under Grand Central penn wont be as crowded, so there is some hope. If they ever decide to build a new MSG they will probably move it and pop a train station/mall on top of it which is the best we can hope for.
Penn Station is not crowded, unless you go by US standards where “crowded” means “not deserted.” Penn Station the rail station gets less traffic than the two Penn Station subway stations, but nobody’s proposing to raze blocks to enlarge those stations and name them after Moynihan. By global commuter rail standards it’s still pretty small – excluding subways, 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.
Some people, for whom anything is a justification to build a megaproject named after a politician they like, think that being one tenth as busy as a Japanese train station is a disaster. Those people are welcome to move to Tibet. The rest of New Yorkers, who are used to having similar density levels to those of Tokyo, should know better.
And don’t even get me started on how much of a waste of money ARC is. Four-tracking the North River Tunnels is a good idea. Feeding the new tunnels into a new cavernous station that doesn’t connect to anything, and sits right next to Water Tunnel 1, is not. If you don’t want to clog the 21 tracks at Penn, then through-route trains, as Paris has done. Or bag the project and extend the 7 to Secaucus.
“Penn Station is not crowded”
when are you there? it was crammed when i used to go there. and we’re not just talking about density on this topic, we’re talking low ceilings, no design, boozed-up passengers, loud. gross. i’ve seen corpses lying on the ground at penn, not a thing i’ve noticed elsewhere.
“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.
Chatelet-Les Halles looks like your basic express subway stop, if this map is accurate. Much like the Penn Station subway stops, each of which gets almost as much ridership as the commuter station.
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.
Alon,
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.
Alon,
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.
I put the blame squarely at Albany’s feet. They’ve owned the Moynihan and New Penn projects since inception. Albany can’t get a deal done. The other players, MSG, Vornado, Related, NJT, Amtrak and the PA, even the Post Office, just had to move forward. Nothings irreversible, but if we truly envision a New Penn we sure have wasted tens of millions planning work arounds. ARC is a NJT project (not a PA project – they came to the party much later). MSG was ready to move into Farley if the new station was part of the mix there. Vornado and Related were ready to re-develop the entire area. Albany whiffed. Now there’s talk of Amtrak moving to Moynihan and the PA taking over Penn. Anyone have an idea what that might look like?
Yes, Penn Station sucks, but the “Moynihan West” plan wouldn’t actually fix any of that; in fact, it would make it worse by moving services further away from Seventh Avenue. Russell and Alon are right that what we mostly need is to expand and simplify the transfers from subway to commuter rail. But I’m not sure that knocking down the storefronts on Seventh Avenue would help anything.
They’re also both right that the stub-end plans for the new NJ Transit terminal are shamefully short-sighted.
very nice post at that link, cap’n.
“the Gimbel’s tunnel that connects you to the Sixth Avenue trains has been closed for years.”
i didn’t even know this existed! my last resort before i switched to flatbush was walking the block east to the N/R. are there traces left of this tunnel to spot?
answering my own question…
1: http://www.railroad.net/forums.....&sd=a (the photos and diagram are no longer available)
2: http://gothamist.com/2009/02/0.....=1#gallery
(photos and diagram!)
The author clearly states that Moynihan Station needs to be built on the current site of Penn Station and that the idea to build under the Farley Post Office was too “West” or “peripheral” because the NJ transit station is North East of the current Penn.
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.
The original Penn Station should be rebuilt. Please demolish the disgusting eyesore of Madison Square Garden. It’s a sad irony to call something so monstrously ugly, and absolutely lacking in any organic relation to its surroundings, a “garden”.
– Serge