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 wish to thank the president,” she stated, “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 favourite phrase — “lovely” — 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 thought referred to as through-running.
By-running would permit New Jersey Transit trains to proceed to Lengthy Island and Lengthy Island Rail Street trains to go on to New Jersey. It’s what Penn Station doesn’t have as we speak, which is an enormous 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 course of a busy metropolis. After trains drop off and choose up riders at Penn, they return 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 Penn’s platforms, greater than a century outdated, are so slender that passengers can’t exit and enter trains on the similar time. So commuters hover by stairwells and escalators, ready for others to disembark earlier than they will board.
The concept of a terminal station made sense when New York designed its transit system greater than a century in the past to convey folks to work in Manhattan within the morning and ship them residence within the night. However that’s not the longer term and even the current: About 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 folks, practically 7 % of metropolis residents who work, are reverse commuters already, residing 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 without having to construct a brand new station. As advocates on the civic group ReThinkNYC put it, the plan ought to be for folks to have the ability to go from “wherever to in every single place.” A resident of Brooklyn or Queens may journey to a job in New Jersey with out a lengthy wait to change 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.
By-running is the worldwide customary: Transit methods in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Hong Kong function this manner. Sure, it is going to be costly to convey New York as much as customary — in all probability $10 billion, minimal. And sure, it can take time, almost definitely as much as a decade, as contractors shut down a number of of Penn’s 21 tracks at a time to realign tracks and lengthen and widen platforms.
However through-running may enhance Penn’s prepare capability at much less price and in much less time than what Amtrak and New York State have needed: to construct one other dead-end underground terminal after flattening a thriving block and a half south of the station. That’s projected to price practically $17 billion.
Amtrak and Penn Station’s two commuter railroads have stated through-running wouldn’t meet their objective of doubling prepare capability. However a number of consultants, together with railroad and transit veterans, doubt the research’s conclusions and say through-running would create a much more environment friendly station. And would attaining a smaller however nonetheless important growth — quite 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 methods, together with the New York subway system, stated at a 2023 ReThink discussion board. “You’ve acquired 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.”
By-running would create an city good, and it might additionally stop an city hurt by avoiding a undertaking that may require the destruction of middle-class housing in addition to workplace buildings stuffed with small companies. In place of the present variety of homeowners and renters could be supertall towers exempt from town’s zoning code.
Although Ms. Hochul just lately retreated from this Andrew Cuomo-era plan, saying she wouldn’t “destroy a neighborhood” for Penn Station, absent a unique method to enhance Penn’s capability, this Sixties-style city renewal undertaking may return.
Offering billions of federal {dollars} to show Penn Station right into a through-running station might not appear very Trumpy; Mr. Trump’s predecessor was the rail man.
However it could attraction to one thing Mr. Trump claims to care about: reducing via 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 tons of of hundreds of commuters, together with swing voters from Lengthy Island and New Jersey.
It’s potential to reconfigure Penn’s tracks and platforms with Madison Sq. Backyard nonetheless above it. One plan, proposed by the development firm Halmar, would demolish a small space of the Backyard, its theater, to convey extra mild down and make it simpler for passengers to succeed in platforms.
However it might 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 outdated Backyard to make approach for a brand new aboveground Penn.
If the Dolan household, which controls the Backyard, doesn’t like the concept, the president may grasp that this kind of 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 attain good issues.
New York has already spent a technology ingeniously hacking round Penn Station’s deadly flaw, the truth that it’s underground. After greater than 20 years of planning, the state lastly opened the Moynihan Practice Corridor throughout the road in 2021, relieving the environment for some passengers and, previously few years, elevating a ceiling in a single hallway and permitting some pure mild to circulate down a brand new entrance there.
An enormous threat is that Mr. Trump will give attention to pace to chop a ribbon on one thing superficial quick.
One other threat is that he’ll accomplish nothing and that below a future administration New York might want to try retaking management over the method in 2029.
Possibly 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 substitute it with the utilitarian sports activities and live performance area.
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 making an attempt to undo the results of that environment friendly work unimpeded by pesky forms.
