Groundbreaking marks start of work on Penn Station Access | Hacker News Reader

Groundbreaking marks start of work on Penn Station Access

trains.com

51 pointseatonphil27 comments

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.

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.

> You can't keep all heritage buildings.

That's one of my best-hated faux axioms. Yeah you see, cities change, like an organism... now get out of my way will you? Gotta tear this junk down.

You literally can't though. Bruges and Venice and Amsterdam all deal with it to some extent. It's about ratios of old and new.

Hausmann destroyed Medieval Paris. It's been going on forever.

I have a fantastic coffee table book of vanished DC buildings called "Capital Losses". Well worth it, if you can find it.

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.

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.

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.

Now imagine each of the five boroughs having their own transit authority with rampant nimbyism trying to kneecap them and you get the Bay Area.

Even unifying the SF metro into one city won’t stop the nimbyism. Look at the state of public transit within SF itself

Look at the TZ bridge as an example. Closest you can get to NYC to build a bridge without dealing with the port authority.

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.

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

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.

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.

I’m happy to see new transit expansions but it’s pretty insane that four above ground train stations and a train yard costs over $3 billion dollars.

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

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.

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.

I don't know about speeding up the folks in the Bronx. 4/5/6 are doing much better since Q went into service. Those folks also now have to pay for two types of transportations, MNR ticket and Subway ticket.

Commuters from CT I kinda of get, but they have to transfer. That might be the hardest part of their commute. Transfer on MNR is a lot harder than subway in my experience.

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.

Millions of people commute to Newark airport twice a day?

>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.

If you live in the east part the Bronx, wouldn't you just take the 4/5/6? I don't see the value of paying Metro North rides, then subway rides. And even if you decide to take the Metro North, it's going thru Queens, I think it'll add more time then 4/5/6.

Say you live in Coop City. Even getting to Gun Hill Road on the 5 is going to take you ten minutes on the bus. If you want to get to the west side of Manhattan, you're going to take the 5 to 149 St/Grand Concourse and change to the 2. To get to e.g. Times Square it's going to take over an hour assuming perfect timings.

I haven't seen proposed timings for the East Bronx stations into Penn but Fordham to Grand Central is only like 20 minutes. The railroads are much faster than the subway because of less stop-and-go due to fewer stations plus greater top speed.

Take the 5 to GC and transfer for the shuttle to TS. Fastest way on rail is by going in a straight lines. Anytime the train has to turn, it slows down to a crawl.

I'm 100% for transit projects, I just don't see a lot of folks in the bronx would take advantage of it. Commuter from new haven lines and CT are probably the most likely customers. It would be better if the new line connects to Harlem Line as well.

You're not hearing me. Taking the 5 to GC is slower. It takes 45 minutes (according to the timetable) to ride the 5 from Gun Hill Road to Grand Central for what is effectively an 11 mile route.

The subway is just slow. The fastest way on rail is by not stopping ten times (with accompanying dwell times on platforms as well accelerating/stopping) and not running on speed-restricted track.

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.

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