Groundbreaking marks start of work on Penn Station Access

[alcover]

On a tangent, learning the story of the demolition of the original Penn Station made me seriously sad. It was magnificient and served for only 50 years or so. Thinking of all that craftsmanshift, the millions of work-hours and the pride of builders makes me ill.

On that front the late 60's and 70's were a demented disaster here in France also.

[ggm]

It is frequently said that London county council from Victorian times onward destroyed more Christopher Wren churches than the German bombing campaigns of WW1 and WW2.

You can't keep all heritage buildings. I like la defense and the pompidou so if we keep those can we ditch the montparnasse tower? I don't like sacre coeur, I will trade that for a more interesting modern building.

[danielvaughn]

It’s especially painful after using Penn Station on a daily basis (which I did a few years ago). It’s a horrid mess. To think it was once nearly as beautiful as GCT is infuriating.

[melling]

What ever happened to the 2.4 mile NJ Path extension to Newark airport?

https://www.nj.com/essex/2017/12/a_timeline_charting_the_pat...

There are so many ways to reduce the bus, taxi, and car usage in the NYC metro area.

[mikeweiss]

There are so many transit improvements that should and could happen in the NYC metro area that never will... Simply because NY and NJ are two separate states that can't agree on what should be done and who should pay for it.

[blamazon]

The benefits aren't limited to the ground - if we had dramatically upgraded the speed with which Newark airport could be reached from the city, LaGuardia could have been deleted and the airspace could be decongested as well. As it stands we seem to be stuck with the airport triumvirate forever.

[woodruffw]

Exciting stuff! See also the proposed Interborough Express[1] and the East Side Access[2] project.

[1]: https://new.mta.info/project/interborough-express

[2]: https://new.mta.info/project/east-side-access

[bradleyjg]

The LIRR equivalent, East Side Access, is 13 years late and $7.6 billion over budget (and counting.)

Maybe the MTA should do a real post mortem there before starting up another such project.

[rst]

There's no new tunneling for this one -- just new above-ground stations, and rehab on pre-existing bridges and track. The work really isn't comparable.

[genocidicbunny]

Wonder if they will manage to finish this before VTA can finish the San Jose extension to BART.

[blehn]

What's the practical benefit of this? Metro North already runs into Grand Central, which is less than minutes away from Penn Station. You don't even have to go outside if you don't want to.

Would much rather see progress on Interborough Express that another commenter linked to.

[gault8121]

The four extra stations in the Bronx can't be hooked up to Grand Central - they are along the line that runs into Penn Station, and for folks in that area of the Bronx, walking to the station and then taking a slow local train into Manhattan is extremely slow. You could possibly have 25k-50k new daily passangers who can now get to Manhattan far faster. -- Penn Station is like a 15 minute walk from Grand Central, and it's not underground. Commuters from Connecticut can now go directly to Penn Station as there are a ton of office buildings in the area, including all of new office space Hudson Yards and the planned redevelopment of Penn Station. While return to office is low in tech, Finance and Law seem to be returning to 100% in office, and so there is a chance that will create real time savings and generate a postive ROI over say 100 years. -- I'd definitely prefer progress on the Interborough Express in an either/or scenario between the two, but given all of the federal funding available now for infrastructure, it might not be an either/or scenario but rather a time for both/and.

[melling]

Ever commute and have to transfer a couple times?

Every transfer adds quite a bit of time.

Multiply that times 2 for a daily commute, times 220 working days, times a million commuters.

[NovemberWhiskey]

>What's the practical benefit of this? Metro North already runs into Grand Central

Yeah, but it does so by coming down the very west edge of the Bronx; through Woodlawn and Fordham. This new route comes much further east through Co-op City and Hunts Point with four new stations planned. It'll be a lot quicker to get into the city (particularly to the west side) from the East Bronx now.

[kar5pt]

Grand Central is not "less than minutes away from Penn Station". It's at least a 15 minute commute. Potentially more depending on which part of the station your walking to/from and if there's delays.