Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum: Replying To Closed access tunnels - Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

You know, the one time someone stuck their hand out in front of my mouth like that, I did what any reasonable creature except humans would do- I bit it. Unno, it was sorta automatic.

In the vein of taxi areas, that would be a big shift... in New York the separate roadways that did exist for taxis at Penn Station (Penn Plaza, at the top of the big escalators near the Madison Square Garden entrance) and Grand Central (the upper roadway above Park Avenue) no longer serve that purpose. The one at Penn is now used as parking for security vehicles, I'm not sure about GCT. It's not too bad at Penn, since you have taxi stands on both 7th and 8th, but at Grand Central it's much less convenient now than going upstairs to follow the sign for "Vanderbilt Avenue and Taxis."

The "doormen" in Chicago remind me of the two trips I've taken at Paris' Gare du Nord, getting out of a cab... haven't really had that problem anywhere else.

Glad to see the post about CHI Union Station and the cab situation. It makes no sense to have the cab driveway still closed, the situation as it is requires pax to catch a cab on a busy, crowded street and the beggars/Asst, doormen that hang out by the corner on Adams are very demanding, the cab drivers have told me that they dont like this, is this a City of Chicago thing or Amtrak or Feds or the State?

nashscan, on Mon, Dec 7, 2009, 02:16 PM, said:

I have seen some tunnels gated in the off-hours for security/homelessness reasons. Other than that the only things I've seen shut down are stations that are not usable because the infrastructure is not there to operate the service.

Not exactly what the original poster was asking about, but here in Chicago, they closed the indoor taxi driveway and taxi stands at Chicago Union Station after 9/11 and haven't reopened them since.

There's a driveway down into the Great Hall building (the old part of the station) on the Clinton Street side near Adams Street that runs inside the building to a taxi drop-off entrance near the north platforms, then turns parallel to Canal Street, then turns for a taxi pick-up exit near the south platforms, then exits again onto Clinton Street near Jackson Boulevard. You could exit or hail a cab indoors in bad weather, the drop-off passengers were kept separate from the cab-hailing passengers, and being inside the building the Amtrak police could shoo off beggars. It was exceedingly convenient.

Since 9/11, the driveway is gated off and used strictly for Amtrak parking.

Now, you have to get out of a cab either at the Adams riverside entrance or in Canal Street, and most people opt for the Adams entrance because it's closer to where most people are coming from by cab (east and usually north of the station). Because it's a constantly busy cabstand on a public street, there's almost always beggars at the Adams cabstand. As you're pulling up to catch your train, almost inherently in a hurry (or you would have walked or taken a bus) and definitely with money in hand to pay the cabbie, they open the door as soon as the cab stops and stick their hand under your nose like a shabby imitation of a particular pushy doorman.

Can you tell I'm not happy about this ongoing "security measure"?

Can you be more specific with regard to what you've heard was closed. I'm not sure what's been closed off the top of my head. The only two connecting tunnels that I'm aware of being closed are the passageway between Penn Station and 6th Avenue and the 6th Avenue connection between 42nd Street and 34th Street. And both of those have been closed for years, long before 9/11.

From what I understand there used to be pedestrian access tunnels linking various underground transportation centers in NYC and that many of them have been sealed or gated in this post 9/11 era. My question is were these just some bogus action steps to justify millions of federal dollars in security spending or did they really have problems with terror threats. Just seems like a damn shame that Americans are the ones that have to be inconvenienced and walk outside in the elements when there is perfectly good infrastructure in place.