Gov. Kathy Hochul reacted with jagged insouciance when the Trump administration snatched management of the slow-moving Penn Station redevelopment undertaking from New York State final month.
“I need to thank the president,” she said, “for taking over the only duty to ship the attractive new $7 billion station that New Yorkers deserve.”
Put apart the governor’s snarky use of President Trump’s favorite phrase — “stunning” — and goals of architectural glory like the unique McKim, Mead & White station that was demolished 60 years in the past. The long run for Penn Station’s commuters and neighbors hinges not on aesthetics however on a wonky concept referred to as through-running.
Via-running would permit New Jersey Transit trains to proceed to Lengthy Island and Lengthy Island Rail Highway trains to go on to New Jersey. It’s what Penn Station doesn’t have immediately, which is a giant purpose it’s so depressing for commuters.
Although Amtrak, the nationwide railroad, owns Penn Station, it operates largely as a terminal for commuter trains — a dead-end station in the midst of a busy metropolis. After trains drop off and decide up riders at Penn, they go back to New Jersey or Lengthy Island as soon as the tracks clear up.
As trains dwell within the station, they take up tracks different trains may use, making commuting extra depressing for the practically 425,000 regional-rail passengers who used Penn every day earlier than the pandemic. Penn’s platforms, greater than a century previous, are so slender that passengers can’t exit and enter trains on the identical time. So commuters hover by stairwells and escalators, ready for others to disembark earlier than they will board.
The thought of a terminal station made sense when New York designed its transit system greater than a century in the past to convey individuals to work in Manhattan within the morning and ship them house within the night. However that’s not the long run and even the current: About a quarter of a million people, practically 7 p.c of metropolis residents who work, are reverse commuters already, dwelling within the metropolis and dealing within the suburbs or in one other close by metropolis, the Regional Plan Affiliation estimates.
With through-running, the Trump administration may rework Penn Station’s commuting expertise while not having to construct a brand new station. As advocates on the civic group ReThinkNYC put it, the plan ought to be for individuals to have the ability to go from “wherever to in all places.” A resident of Brooklyn or Queens may trip to a job in New Jersey and not using a lengthy wait to modify trains or a separate fare. A Bronx advertising government who loses his Decrease Manhattan job may seek for jobs in Connecticut or New Jersey. Midtown and Decrease Manhattan may construct extra housing, and suburbs and smaller cities may construct extra workplace buildings to welcome extra high-paying jobs.
Via-running is the worldwide commonplace: Transit programs in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Hong Kong function this fashion. Sure, will probably be costly to convey New York as much as commonplace — in all probability $10 billion, minimal. And sure, it will take time, most probably up to a decade, as contractors shut down a couple of of Penn’s 21 tracks at a time to realign tracks and lengthen and widen platforms.
However through-running may improve Penn’s practice capability at much less value and in much less time than what Amtrak and New York State have wished: to construct one other dead-end underground terminal after flattening a thriving block and a half south of the station. That’s projected to value nearly $17 billion.
Amtrak and Penn Station’s two commuter railroads have said through-running wouldn’t meet their goal of doubling practice capability. However a number of consultants, together with railroad and transit veterans, doubt the examine’s conclusions and say through-running would create a much more environment friendly station. And would attaining a smaller however nonetheless important enlargement — somewhat than sticking to a tough objective — be adequate?
“Why not take the chance to repair the rattling factor as soon as and for all?” Andy Byford, a veteran of a number of marquee world transit programs, together with the New York subway system, stated at a 2023 ReThink forum. “You’ve received not solely the financial advantages of town,” he famous, “however the knock-on impact of north, south, east and west of companies popping up, of housing being developed.”
Via-running would create an city good, and it will additionally stop an city hurt by avoiding a undertaking that will require the destruction of middle-class housing in addition to workplace buildings crammed with small businesses. In place of the present range of householders and renters could be supertall towers exempt from town’s zoning code.
Although Ms. Hochul not too long ago retreated from this Andrew Cuomo-era plan, saying she wouldn’t “destroy a neighborhood” for Penn Station, absent a distinct solution to improve Penn’s capability, this Nineteen Sixties-style city renewal undertaking may return.
Offering billions of federal {dollars} to show Penn Station right into a through-running station could not appear very Trumpy; Mr. Trump’s predecessor was the rail man.
However it may attraction to one thing Mr. Trump claims to care about: chopping by way of forms, by getting three separate railroads, with three separate units of union work forces, to work collectively in constructing a unified rail system to make life simpler for lots of of hundreds of commuters, together with swing voters from Lengthy Island and New Jersey.
It’s attainable to reconfigure Penn’s tracks and platforms with Madison Sq. Backyard nonetheless above it. One plan, proposed by the construction firm Halmar, would demolish a small space of the Backyard, its theater, to convey extra gentle down and make it easier for passengers to succeed in platforms.
However it will be simpler with out the Backyard there. Alex Washburn, a former chief city designer for New York Metropolis, has proposed constructing a brand new Backyard in an empty lot throughout Seventh Avenue the place the Resort Pennsylvania as soon as stood after which demolishing the previous Backyard to make manner for a new aboveground Penn.
If the Dolan household, which controls the Backyard, doesn’t like the thought, the president may grasp that such a undertaking is why the Structure acknowledges the ability of eminent area; the founders designed our system of presidency in order that we don’t want an authoritarian to realize good issues.
New York has already spent a technology ingeniously hacking round Penn Station’s deadly flaw, the truth that it’s underground. After more than two decades of planning, the state lastly opened the Moynihan Prepare Corridor throughout the road in 2021, relieving the environment for some passengers and, previously few years, raising a ceiling in one hallway and allowing some pure gentle to circulation down a brand new entrance there.
An enormous danger is that Mr. Trump will deal with velocity to chop a ribbon on one thing superficial quick.
One other danger is that he’ll accomplish nothing and that beneath a future administration New York might want to try retaking management over the method in 2029.
Perhaps there’s one thing to be stated for sluggishness. It took simply 5 years for the Pennsylvania Railroad firm and the Madison Sq. Backyard Company to smash the grand Doric-columned corridor into items six many years in the past and exchange it with the utilitarian sports activities and live performance enviornment.
A daylit Penn Station has been a reminiscence for longer than it existed. As a 3rd technology of passengers trudges the alternative Penn’s remaining sweaty catacombs, we’re nonetheless attempting to undo the results of that environment friendly work unimpeded by pesky forms.
