NEW YORK — Reorganization of commuter rail service with through running — in which Penn Station would no longer be a terminus for NJ Transit and MTA commuter operations, but see trains serve both commuter networks — would not be enough to address future needs transit needs at the station, officials told a Monday forum at New York University.
The event was held to address future plans for expansion of Penn Station, as well as proposals put forth by two community organizations that through running could handle transit needs without requiring the station expansion, and related displacement of existing businesses and other structures in the station area.
Our Town New York reports that Amtrak official Petra Messick said service from New Jersey into Penn Station “needs to be doubled, at least, to meet the existing and future needs of the region. All through-running or hybrid configurations within the footprint of the existing station fall short of this goal.”
Messick, senior program director, Amtrak capital delivery for the Gateway program, said that doubling will become possible when the Gateway project, including the new tunnels under the Hudson River, are complete. Completion of those tunnels is currently projected for 2038 [see “Officials sign off on $6.88 billion grant …,” Trains News Wire, July 9, 2024].
But the doubling — from 24 to 48 trains per hour — would exceed the current capacity of the station, which is why a proposal introduced in 2014 called for an underground addition to the station that would require demolition of 35 buildings, as NJ.com reports — a plan strongly opposed in the neighborhood.
That has led for support for the through-running proposal, which has suggested that a single commuter operation using Penn Station as a midpoint, rather than the separate NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road (and, eventually, Metro-North Railroad) services with Penn as a terminus, could handle the traffic without expansion.
Consultant Foster Nichols of WSP told the forum he had analyzed proposal from ReThink NYC and the TriState Transportation Campaign, and said their implementation would be “time consuming, costly, and disruptive,” requiring 10 years of service disruptions. “The notion is it’s cheap and easy,” he said. “There is a lot of work and investment to deliver through running.” NJ Transit trains, for example, run on overhead catenary, while LIRR and some Metro-North services use third-rail power.
Proponents of the through-running plans remain unconvinced, saying an independent study of the proposal should be required.
“Consulting firms like WSP, whatever their competencies, answer to their contracting parties,” said Samuel Turvey, head of ReThink NYC. “Here, that is the railroads that have opposed through running for years, mostly because they do not want to integrate operations.”
The forum, which drew a full house, was sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Municipal Arts Society.
The freeing of track space at Pennsylvania Station can be achieved by transferring all intercity trains originating in New York bound north to Grand Central Terminal. Such trains would include the ‘Lake Shore Limited’ and the dedicated New York – Boston ‘Acela Express’ and ‘Northeast Regional’. [Installation of overhead catenary to GCT for the ‘Acela Express’ and ‘Northeast Regional’ would be necessary.]
If freeing track space at Pennsylvania Station is insufficient, a third new railway terminal might be built on the northern edge of Lower Manhatten (aka New York City’s original Downtown). This new terminal could be named “New York Union Station”. [If I were the commissioned architect, the head house would be designed in the Beaux-Arts style. But that is a topic for another day.]
24 trains an hour on one track in one direction is a 2.5 minute headway. Subways can beat that, but when you add 80 mph and a 2% down grade from 10th Ave Portal to the bottom, you’re pushing the envelope, as our aviator friends would say.
A consultant is quoted, ” NJ Transit trains, for example, run on overhead catenary, while LIRR and some Metro-North services use third-rail power.
Actually ALL MNR services use third rail to NY GCT. PRR and NYC installed different third rail systems that are incompatible (PRR overrunning; NYC underrunning) so NO MNR cars can run on NY Penn’s third rail. MNR-NH AC/DC MU cars are 60 Hz only and cannot run on NY Penn’s 25 Hz power,
What was that sign?
PLAN
AHEA
D
NY Penn has a narrow footprint leading to narrow platforms. Amtrak DOES run through trains but does not let boarding passengers on the platform until the train has arrived and the arriving passengers have gone up to the arrival level.
Where are Musk’s tunnel boring machines when you need them? Or can they only go through rock?
“Completion in 2038”. Thirteen years to bore two tunnels under the river? The original job took a fraction of that.
Regardless of the logistics involved in through running it’s the politics that are the big hurdle. The structural and electrical limitations are nothing compared to the provincial bureaucratic frictions between Amtrak, MTA, NJT, City Hall, Albany, Trenton, and Washington, DC.
I got excited years ago when I read that Governor Cuomo was advancing the “Empire Station Complex” expansion plan. I thought it was going to be a new station built west of Penn Station at the end of the West Side Connection. It could be connected to Moynihan Hall by tunnels. That would have helped by taking all of the Empire Corridor trains and the Lake Shore Limited out of the main station. Of course that was not the plan at all.