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.
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.