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Comment by blehn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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