It was a stroke of brilliance for the Trump administration and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to tap Andy Byford to oversee the decades-long needed rebuilding of bedraggled Penn Station, the country’s busiest train facility that shames New York and America in its dinginess, confusion and maddeningly inefficiencies. We happily join the universal applause that has met Byford’s appointment.
Maybe the dream of a better Penn, a Penn worthy of New York, a Penn to rival its crosstown sister Grand Central, can actually come to be. Readers know well who Byford is, having run transit in the world’s two premier cities, New York and London. Now Train Daddy, backed by President Trump and Duffy, can be the one to finally get Penn on the right track.
While there have been countless studies and plans and drawings, with committees and task forces (and we have seen them all) there has never been a concentrated effort. What Penn has long required is single vision to end its Balkanized corridors, patrolled by three separate police departments and cleaned by three separate maintenance crews (each knows where to stop based on the pattern of the floor tiles).
The station is a federal property, owned by Amtrak, but they only run 5% of the trains and carry 5% of the passengers. The other 95% are handled by the Long Island Rail Road and NJTransit. And joining at some point will be trains from Metro-North. All of those artificial divisions must be done away with. All trains should be announced throughout the station and there should be universal boarding. No longer can there be three separate systems for passengers to navigate.
Physically, the upper concourse level must be removed to put everyone on the same plane. Then the Central Corridor and West End Concourse must be extended to reach the southern half of the station, used by Amtrak and NJT. The short tracks 1 to 4, serving NJT, must be lengthened to accommodate 12 rail cars, allowing for longer consists and giving those passengers access to the Moynihan Train Hall and points west.
The addition of new vertical access points from the platforms will enable faster loading and unloading, as will the elimination of the unneeded upper level.
These improvements will notably increase capacity and allow for more trains and more passengers. When the new Gateway tunnel opens, doubling the number of tubes under the Hudson, through running those trains to Grand Central (the best option) or out to Queens and Long Island is far smarter than demolishing Block 780 to the south for a dead-end stub terminal, now pegged to cost $17 billion! And that goes for the “780-lite” plan as some have proposed. There is no need to expand Penn to make it work perfectly.
For years we have been trying to tell all this to anyone who would listen, from Amtrak, to the MTA, to NJT, to the Port Authority, to the governors of New York and New Jersey. Finally, with Byford, working for Trump and Duffy, there is someone in place with the understanding, the experience and the mandate to make it happen.
In the original Penn Station, torn down 60 years ago, there were 10-foot statues of Penn’s fathers, Alexander Cassatt and Samuel Rea. Bring back those statues when Penn is reborn.
