A 3-Part Plan to Rebuild New York's Old Penn Station
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While I'm not opposed to this in principle, it would probably be to Amtrak's advantage to look at something along the lines of Grand Central in terms of functionality: Blend a much more open station design (both in terms of traffic flows and in terms of natural lighting) with some mid-rise structures on-site (for example, a dedicated and licensed-out hotel property of some sort). Mind you, in an ideal world you'd be able to pair a Penn Station redevelopment with a better handling of the Hotel Pennsylvania (i.e. the 1700-room property across the street that has basically gone to waste with bad management).
jis
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Yet another grand plan to waste phenomenal amounts of money which can be used to build a more effective terminal and other infrastructure, just for the sake of vanity. Just IMHO of course.
Here's a rule of thumb that I just made up:
Station Size ~ Number of People Housed
In English, the size of the station should be proportional to the number of people to be housed there at any particular time.
There's an easy way to tell. Imagine, for NY Penn that one of the North River tunnels went out of service suddenly, during the evening rush hour and that the situation lasted for two hours. Imagine how many people would be stuck in the station because they can't get onto a train. The station has to be big enough to <comfortably> hold that number of people.
Once you get the size of the station, the "grandeur" of it should be proportional to that, otherwise it'll seem like you're stuck in Warehouse 13.
jb
Station Size ~ Number of People Housed
In English, the size of the station should be proportional to the number of people to be housed there at any particular time.
There's an easy way to tell. Imagine, for NY Penn that one of the North River tunnels went out of service suddenly, during the evening rush hour and that the situation lasted for two hours. Imagine how many people would be stuck in the station because they can't get onto a train. The station has to be big enough to <comfortably> hold that number of people.
Once you get the size of the station, the "grandeur" of it should be proportional to that, otherwise it'll seem like you're stuck in Warehouse 13.
jb
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Metra Electric Guest
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Somebody proposed rebuilding one of the demolished Chicago stations ("Grand Central" I think) as a high speed station which seemed crazy since there would have been no through trains nor any connectivity with commuter or conventional rail at existing stations. But as a grand gesture it was fun...
Which is what I suspect a lot of the Penn plans are as well; grand gestures rather than practical or functional plans...
Which is what I suspect a lot of the Penn plans are as well; grand gestures rather than practical or functional plans...
the_traveler
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If they "rebuilt" Penn Station, what would happen to Madison Square Garden - directly above NYP? :huh:
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G
Guest
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The suggestion is that Madison Square Garden may go away on its own, leaving the space available for something else, such as a new station structure.
See for example, this story: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/07/25/madison-square-garden-new-york-knicks-rangers-penn-station/2585787/
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Sorry for responding to my own post, but it seems to me that the most coolest wickedest thing of all would be to build a high rise above the tracks, as the evil developers want to do, but integrate it with the station concourse to make a truly awe-inspiring entrance to the city; something that people would travel to see all on its own. Something like the atrium of the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/18097936@N00/3081959596/
That's an 50 story (I believe) atrium above the ground level concourse of the hotel. And I can guarantee you, it is an amazing sight in person, and riding the glass elevators is worth the trip as well. So do the same thing at NYP, but make it 100 stories! Utilize the air rights, but don't use them to box in the station as MSG does: use them to make the most amazing architectural masterpiece ever seen, as part of the station.
The low level designs for new Penn Stations that get floated around every now then just don't feel like they are part of New York, because New York and especially midtown Manhattan are all about high rises and up up up. And so it is no surprise to me that these designs never seem to gain any traction with New Yorkers.
Thanks for your time,
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Eurasian
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If you want a truly cutting edge 'station building' for NYP, look overseas, where the future is now..
I think we're both thinking the same thing: A low-rise Penn Station a la the old structure feels like it would be in place in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. Today, not so much. Integrating it with a major hotel complex, etc. would make sense...and you can manage a grand atrium that doesn't feel cramped without letting the airspace at the station be lost to use.
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You can bet almost certainly that if Madison Square Garden moves a high rise will be built over Penn Station.
jis
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The trick would be to allow construction of a high rise while leaving enough space underneath it to accommodate a very high ceiling and yet HVAC friendly concourse with significant amount of skylight space to allow some natural light to stream in.
One huge problem with the original Penn Station was that it was quite HVAC unfriendly, and always had a dank smell about it. We don't want to reintroduce such early 20th century stuff all over again. Let us do something new and better, reflecting the current times and technology instead of keeping on taking giant steps backwards.
One huge problem with the original Penn Station was that it was quite HVAC unfriendly, and always had a dank smell about it. We don't want to reintroduce such early 20th century stuff all over again. Let us do something new and better, reflecting the current times and technology instead of keeping on taking giant steps backwards.
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Devil's Advocate
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The current Penn Station is just about the biggest step back from grandeur I've ever seen. It may be practical but boy is it ugly and depressing. Not that I would expect local residents to notice or care. New Yorkers seem to pride themselves on not seeing or responding to anything around them. Perhaps Penn Station is not the station New York needs but it does make an excellent case for being the station New York deserves.
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BCL
Engineer
The current MSG would have to be gone for the columns to be realigned. That seems to the bigger impetus to remove MSG. Those columns support the arena structure. The layout is pretty bad and affects the throughput of passengers. That could theoretically be independent of whether or not there's a large arena above Penn Station. I could imagine a plan to demolish the current MSG, realign the columns for better platform access, and then build a new state of the art arena over it.
I'm still not quite sure what happened with the occupancy permit application from the Knicks. I thought they wanted an indefinite one while the Manhattan Community Board only approved a 10 year permit back in 2013. I'm not sure what could be done, but there's a new arena in Brooklyn that would be adequate as a temporary home. I'm a Warriors fan, and I remember when they relocated for a year to San Jose.
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Amtrak is committed to the Moynihan Station at the Post Office across the street which will be their new entrance eventually. Jan 2016 if construction is on time, one will be able to get to a new Platform and Amtrak from the post office entrance and thereafter phase 2 will eventually commence.
There is enough space at Moynihan to handle all the tracks at penn station even tho the platform extension has most but not all of the tracks.
Penn station underground is dumpy and tight during peak hours and it seems as though lots of stores have closed by the LIRR section including Penn Books which was the last store gone.
Amtrak's future will be at Moynihan Station and a new Penn station south as it is securing a right of way which is ongoing for future use for new underground tracks.
I think a Penn station south and Moynihan station will make the once seedy area much nicer since that part of Manhattan has never developed nor turned nice like the rest. MSG doesn't appear to be going anywhere but I do believe with a combination of penn station south, moynihan station and revamping Penn station as when Amtrak moves out there is more room to start doing construction and projects inside penn station and making more usage of upper levels, you can have a very nice terminal.
There is enough space at Moynihan to handle all the tracks at penn station even tho the platform extension has most but not all of the tracks.
Penn station underground is dumpy and tight during peak hours and it seems as though lots of stores have closed by the LIRR section including Penn Books which was the last store gone.
Amtrak's future will be at Moynihan Station and a new Penn station south as it is securing a right of way which is ongoing for future use for new underground tracks.
I think a Penn station south and Moynihan station will make the once seedy area much nicer since that part of Manhattan has never developed nor turned nice like the rest. MSG doesn't appear to be going anywhere but I do believe with a combination of penn station south, moynihan station and revamping Penn station as when Amtrak moves out there is more room to start doing construction and projects inside penn station and making more usage of upper levels, you can have a very nice terminal.
neroden
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I like it.
jis
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There are few misconceptions apparent....
1. There will be no new platforms related to Moynihan station. It will just have access to the existing platforms. In that sense Moynihan Station is just another concourse for accessing the existing platforms of Penn Station.
2. Penn Station South platforms will not be used by Amtrak at all. They will be entirely for the use of NJ Transit. Amtrak will get greater use of the central platforms in the original station which will be partially vacated by NJT. Additionally, as things stand now, Penn Station South will not be directly accessible from Moynihan and nor will its platforms be directly accessible from Moynihan. One will have to walk through the old part of Penn Station to from one to the other.
As for whether Penn Station South will actually happen and if so, when it will happen, is currently a very open question. Moynihan Phase 2 which will cost about a billion dollars is not fully or even substantially funded yet. So when that will come to pass is an open question too. What will be completed in 2016 is phase 1, which consists of the west side underground concourse which will connect to tracks 3 through 21. There will be two additional entrances from the street level at the corners of 31st and 33rd St and 8th Ave under the Farley building. That will be it.
neroden
Engineer
I suspect that the Moynihan waiting room will be funded, if only for the following reason: in order to knock down MSG & rebuild Penn Station differently, you first have to move all those waiting passengers, baggage operations, etc. off to one side. (They did it while passengers were using the station in the 1960s but there were FAR fewer passengers.) Moynihan gets all that stuff off to one side.
One funny note, according to the books "Late Great Pennsylvania Station" and "New York's Pennsylvania Stations", the commuters of the LIRR, who always were the majority of the passengers, primarily used the LIRR/Exit Concourse level of the station, not the grand waiting room/concourse level above. They always were stuck in basement, then and now. That was the level which LIRR ticketing and waiting room were (and are) on, and the level that had and has direct access to the 7th and 8th Ave subways.
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M
Metra Electric Guest
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Don't even have to go that far: the various competition entries for the, iirc, New Transbay Terminal were pretty impressive (and high-rise) - while they weren't primarily transit, they certainly brought it in. This is from memory, mind you, I'd have to go back and look at the plans/renderings.
One of the problems with plopping a (very) tall atrium on top of the train trains would be the pressure from trains blasting through the tunnels and the risk of fire shooting up the atrium. Both of these could be solved with a glass ceiling made of fire rated glass and either moveable or rigid (with exhausts somehow to take the pressure differential of the trains blasting through). I suspect the dampness of the tunnels on either end of Penn are what caused the damp/dank/musty smell (no personal experience it was gone before I was born).
They have just been building over the open tracks and (I think I've posted this before) there was a very limited working window and they were not allowed to add any columns, even temporary so the span over the tracks is like 100 some feet. It's essentially a raft for the base or foundations of a much taller office tower which I assume is under construction now.
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Suffice it to say that there is a 15mph or so speed limit on all movements through Penn Station. So there will be not much blasting through of anything. Just very gentle moving through.
Te musty smell was because there was no good air circulation system in place. It was not a pleasant place to be in, in the middle of summer.
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jis
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The East River tunnels never had any openings. The speed limit has always been 60mph, and the old Penn Station superstructure just worked fine in spite of all the alleged pressures and blasts. So I am not convinced that this is a huge problem to work around. Having seen similar situations at Berlin Hauptbahnof lower level and at many other stations causing no problem, it is quite clear that this issue is easy to work around. I am sure most designers are capable of designing to handle such adequately.
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