What NY-Penn Station is Really Missing

This item appeared first in News and Notes: November 12, 2016

---

NY-Penn Station is North America’s busiest and probably it’s most disliked rail station.  Ever since the Pennsylvania Railroad tore down the original Pennsylvania Station and covered it with Madison Square Garden and Two Penn Plaza, people have been universally unhappy with what was left behind for roughly 300,000 daily riders.

Since then, there have been dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of different designs and proposals to build a new station in its place.  To date, there has been no real, substantial progress on any of those plans beyond occasional partial renovations of some parts of the station over the years.  Empire State Development is currently nearing completion of the first phase of the Moynihan Station project, which involves the rebuilding and expansion of the West End Concourse, and while that work is looking really good, the WEC is the least used part of the station, and fancying it up doesn’t do much for most users of the station.

Whether it’s one of the fancy overhaul proposals with huge ceilings, lots of glass, fancy finishes, and all like that, or it’s the current running plan to build out a new station across 8th Avenue in the Farley Post Office Building, plans for NY-Penn Station miss the core points of what the current NY-Penn Station is currently missing.  As much as it will stink, we’re all going to have to reconcile ourselves with two big things:

• Madison Square Garden and Two Penn Plaza will not be moving. So a big train hall on the site of the old Penn Station probably won’t happen for many, many years.
• A new train hall across 8th Avenue will never be a proper substitute for proper accommodations in the main part of the station, on top of the platforms themselves. Most jobs in the city are west of 7th Avenue, and the train platforms sit between 7th and 8th Avenue—people aren’t going to be interested in walking all the way west to 8th Avenue just to double back when its time to get back on the train.  The railroads could build the nicest, most fantastic station, but if standing in the old, dim, and dreary part of the station will save them 8 seconds and give them a better chance of finding a seat, that’s where commuters are going to wait.

Rendering of the proposed LIRR Connecting Concourse
(Rendering: Governor Andrew Cuomo)

While we probably won’t ever be able to get the NY-Penn Station overhaul of our dreams, the railroads, Empire State Development, the Governor’s office need to focus in on making the best of what space they currently have available in the station complex now.  There’s no other real substitute that’s going to have a chance of happening in our lifetimes, unfortunately.

Proposed renderings of upgrades for the Connecting Concourse
(Rendering: Governor Andrew Cuomo)

In the beginning of this year, as Governor Cuomo was touring the state announcing the key components of what would be his agenda for that year, the Governor unveiled conceptual plans for a big overhaul of NY-Penn Station including a grand new entrance on the east side of 8th Avenue and a glass canopied overhang along 33rd Street to let some natural light down into the station.  As the year progressed, and politics and events took a toll on the Cuomo administration, those aspects fell away from the project and the Governor presented a refined plan that expanded the scope of the Moynihan Train Hall across 8th Avenue to include both Amtrak and LIRR waiting and ticketing areas (instead of just Amtrak), ditched the MSG Theater entrance on the east side of 8th Avenue and the 33rd Street atrium thing, and proposed widening and improving the Connecting Concourse, which is the LIRR concourse that runs east-west roughly underneath 33rd Street.

Rendering of the proposed LIRR Connecting Concourse
(Rendering: Governor Andrew Cuomo)

Renderings of the revamped Connecting Concourse are shown along the right-hand side.  Full-sized renderings are available on the Governor’s Flickr Page.

The shift in focus to the Connecting Concourse and not necessarily what’s across the street is a good improvement—it focuses more on where people will actually want to wait for trains and not for expansions to the station in the wrong place.

Renderings of a new staircase enclosure leading between
tracks 18/19 and the widened concourse
(Rendering: Governor Andrew Cuomo)

But the Governor’s most recent proposals don’t seem to include one of the three agencies that use the station—NJTransit.  Any expansion or substantial improvement to any part of the station that doesn’t account for all operators is a big mistake.  The reason why NY-Penn Station is so confusing now is because everyone did their own thing without accounting for the others.

Right now NY-Penn Station has three different railroads with three different types of signage (the LIRR’s signage isn’t even that consistent across its own part…it varies between its scheme and the NYCT scheme), three different sets of departure boards, three different sets of ticket windows and TVM’s, etc., etc.  It can be incredibly confusing if you’re not familiar with the station.

Back in October, a friend of mine was in the city and had some time to kill between checking out of his hotel and getting the train to the airport, so he graciously volunteered to be sent on a ‘scavenger’ hunt through NY-Penn Station.  I gave him a list of 12 different common, but confusing to find, locations, and told him to make his way through the station to find each location.  It took him 41 minutes in total to find the twelve places…  He said that his overall impression of the station was “extremely confusing”, and described the signage in different parts of the station as ranging from “good but small” for Transit to “not bad” for Amtrak to “very poor” for signage in the LIRR concourse.  He described several locations where signage was confusing, conflicting, or just plain incorrect.  I could go on for pages and pages about all the signage problems in the station, but in the end signage needs to be consistent and comprehensive across the station and there needs to be one main departure board showing all train departures (riders shouldn't have to look in three different places to figure out what track their train is leaving from.  If you enter NY-Penn Station from 8th Av and are looking to go to LI, you can’t look at the big screen that has the word “Departures” on the top of it, you have to go downstairs and walk a couple hundred feet to find that information out.  It’s crazy, and I can’t think of any other transportation hub around the world that has things all split out like that.)

(Matt Davies/Newsday cartoon) 

Everything humanly possible needs to be done to make NY-Penn Station look less like three stations and more one, unified station.  If that’s not done, even the most expensive improvements won’t make the station a free-flowing, easy to navigate station—which should be the core goal before preying up the station.  At the end of the day, while a fancy new train hall will not actually make the trains run on time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to invest in the passenger environment, we just have to make sure that we’re spending money in the right way, and that all of the parties involved are on the same page and working together to not only make catching a train from NY-Penn Station a nicer looking experience, but a much less confusing and frustrating one.  Lots of these changes (like consistent or correct signage) don’t require billions or even millions of dollars, they just need some coordination and effort between the three agencies that act like they’re operating on different planets instead of the same station.