NEW YORK — Penn Station must be expanded to accommodate future traffic, according to Amtrak and the commuter railroads using the Manhattan rail hub.
That is the conclusion of a report — commissioned by Amtrak, NJ Transit, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — released Wednesday after studying alternatives to expansion.
The report determined that the alternatives — including addition of 10 tracks below the existing facility, through running of commuter trains, and full or partial reconstruction of existing tracks and platforms — either were not feasible or would not achieve the goal of doubling the station’s capacity from 24 for 48 trains an hour to handle the additional trains that will become possible when the Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson River is completed.
“This study demonstrates that to meet the needs of the region, we must expand the station beyond its existing footprint to deliver the passenger capacity promised by the Gateway Program,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a press release announcing the report. “The feasibility study is part of a long-term collaboration between Amtrak, MTA, and NJ Transit to seek ways to transform the busiest train station in the Western Hemisphere into a modern, world-class facility with the capacity to provide 200,000 more passenger trips.”
Links to the full report — available as six individual chapters, along with an executive summary and two appendices — is available by scrolling to the “Project Documents” section of this web page.
Expansion of the station has long been discussed, and earlier proposals have called for a one-block expansion south of the current station; the New York Times notes that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo presented a “Penn Station South” concept in 2020.
But expansion has faced community opposition because of the impact it would have on residents and existing structures. The West Side Spirit newspaper reports opponents immediately decried the results of the study. A proponent of through running — which envisions a single commuter rail agency that serves the region, rather than the current NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road services that terminate at Penn Station — said the report “completely missed the mark when it comes to evaluating the capacity a conversion to through running … would bring.” That proponent, Samuel Turvey of ReThinkNYC, says the organization’s through-running proposal would achieve the desired 48 trains per hour.
However, while the report says expansion is necessary, it does not commit to the form that project would take. The Times reports Amtrak officials say they are not sure whether they would prefer to use land south of the station or some to the north, and the three rail operators have created a Station Working Advisory Group of more than 50 people to consider the options.
Growth? Let’s hope and pray and work and advocate for growth, because there hasn’t been any. Most commuter railroads have been flat at best.
As for Amtrak, it has pretty much handled the same traffic counts from one decade to the next. Twenty years ago, Cailfornia accounted for all of Amtrak’s increased traffic. Proably California traffic has peaked by now.
Today’s puff piece about Amtrak in the Wall Street Journal might have clarified that. Let’s look at the numbers. If every Amtrak ticket in a given year went to a different person, that would be about 8% of America population. Since most tickets are a round trip, and since Amtrak accomodates frequent, if not daily, riders, what are we down to? One American in fifty, or one in a hundred, rides Amtrak in a given year?