Moynihan Bus Rapid Transit Station!

Ben Kabak tweeted about a new proposal from something called Woods Bagot to open up Penn Station to sunlight by removing the theater under Madison Square Garden:

For many years I've argued that the "Moynihan Station" proposal contained at least two major design flaws that nullified any improvement to passenger circulation: it has lots of steps, and it's west of where most people want to go. Woods Bagot pays lip service to Moynihan Station proposal, but I would hope that this helps people realize they don't need to use the Farley Post Office to bring light back into Penn Station. Since they talk about "wrapping around" Madison Square Garden, I hope it will also deal with the atrocious pedestrian conditions above Penn Station:

Of course, there is one major drawback to the proposal: it's a wonderful vision for increased mobility, but it's not Pat Moynihan's vision, and may fail to adequately glorify our late Senator.

But wait! The proposal also mentions that "a new location for the well-used theater is unresolved." I've got the perfect place: the old Farley Post Office across the street. And you know what else we could put there? Buses!

We know that there's a shortage of places to catch a bus in Manhattan, particularly near the Lincoln Tunnel. Meanwhile, good terminals are critical to efficient hub-and-spoke bus networks, but our elected officials would rather pander to private car owners. There is a lot of space (with skylights!) inside the old building where the postal trucks used to go, and more along the sides:

You could even build a flyover across Eighth Avenue, or maybe even an underpass next to the train tracks, if you wanted to spend some money. Back inside, there are big open spaces for concourses:

Two of the biggest annoyances for transit advocates are the Moynihan Station fans with their desire to build a giant sculpture and tell us it's a functioning train station, and "Bus Rapid Transit" pushers who tell us that trains are wasteful luxuries for white people and we should be spending all the government money on buses. I've always argued that the Lincoln Tunnel XBL is the most effective form of bus rapid transit in the country. If we call this the Moynihan Bus Rapid Transit Station, maybe we can get both of these groups together to build a gorgeous temple for bus riders to enter the city like gods.

Off-peak service frequencies on the Long Island Rail Road

I made this map of off-peak service frequencies on the Long Island Rail Road.

Click through to see it full size.

Buses or trains on the Northeast Corridor?

On Sunday I posted about setting goals and working through disagreements. One area I had in mind was the Northeast Corridor. We currently have 86% of trips, or 137 million per year, going by car or plane, and I asked what it would take to flip that so we have no more than 14% of trips, or 24 million, by car or plane.

My original thought was that with so many passengers traveling through New York Penn Station, and the often-repeated claim that the North River Tunnels leading into Penn being maxed out, any increase would have to be in buses. In the comments, Alon convinced me that there is capacity in the tunnels, and that Amtrak can move more passengers by running longer trains, improving signaling and increasing the number of seats per train. Increasing the number of seats may be counterproductive, because it will lower the quality of the experience and thus limit what Amtrak can charge for a seat.

Photo: MattHurst / Flickr

The question then comes down to a strategic issue. Which is likely to get more people out of their cars, improving signaling and increasing train length, or increasing the number of buses? It's a little more complicated, though, because the strategies are unequal in various ways. It might be better to ask which gives you the biggest bang for the buck, but it's not all about money. Which strategy gets the largest number of people out of their cars per hour of activism?

Signal improvements and train cars are fairly straightforward because there's no constituency that feels threatened by better train signals or longer Amtrak trains. There is only the constituency that wants to deny Amtrak funding. Activist hours would simply be spent fighting for that funding.

In contrast, there are constituencies that are opposed to various ways of providing more bus capacity. The intercity bus companies seem to be able to buy new buses with fare revenue and maybe even build terminals in other cities, but they don't seem to have enough income to build their own terminals in Manhattan, so any indoor terminal or garage would have to be built with public funding.

Up to now, intercity buses have expanded on the cheap by simply using curb space. This has fueled the explosive growth in this sector of the market, but by enabling "community review" of bus stops and other onerous requirements, New York City has put the curb out of reach of many intercity operators.

That leads us to the final set of questions for tonight: Given the new law, how can we continue to expand intercity bus service in the Northeast Corridor? What is the best use of activists' time? Would an hour spent on bus service get more people out of their cars than spending an hour lobbying for longer Amtrak trains and better signals?

Budget goblins: the phantom menace

I've been meaning to write something about the shenanigans across the river with the "ARC Tunnel." I agree with a lot of the people who've said that the current plan with it's "deep cavern" under Macy's basement was a disaster, and I hope that eventually what will be done is to feed the new tunnels directly into the current Penn Station tracks, along with a sensible through-running plan to maintain decent frequencies. But I wanted to say something about the significance of the decision.

After Chris Christie gravely wounded the ARC Tunnel, there was no shortage of critical commentary. But most of it (Freemark, Renn, Herbert, Sollohub) focused on how Christie had "thrown money away" by giving up federal grants and the possibility of a significant infrastructure improvement for the short-term payoff of not having to raise gas taxes or tolls. And that's a legitimate point, but it's not the real story.

Paul Krugman is generally good at looking beyond the flimflam to find out what politicians are actually doing. In August, he ripped away the "deficit reduction" disguise from Paul Ryan's plan to cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the middle class. And Krugman, who lives in Princeton and regularly takes New Jersey Transit, will be directly affected by Christie's actions. It's disappointing, therefore, that Krugman's conclusion simply echoed those of the other commentators.

In order to get behind this particular flimflam, we need to go to Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. Just as Krugman used the Tax Policy Center's analysis to show that Ryan's plan was not about deficit reduction, Higashide noted that the New Jersey Turnpike Authority is borrowing two billion dollars to widen the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway (at a total cost of $3.6 billion). Christie's decision is not about fiscal responsibility.

Higashide and his colleagues at Tri-State, simply, have been paying attention to what Christie is doing. They've written extensively on the double standard that Christie maintains for transit and driving - as seen in Christie's 11% cut in the NJ Transit budget, which resulted in a 25% fare hike for Transit riders, while the gas tax stays the same. In April, Tri-State's Zoe Baldwin pulled this gem out of an interview with the Star-Ledger:

Editorial board member: What’s the difference between a gas tax hike and a fare hike, besides who it lands on?

Christie: That’s the difference.

What's the difference between cutting the ARC Tunnel and cutting the Turnpike widening, besides who has a shorter commute?

I have to be honest here: if I were governor of New Jersey, I would do the same kinds of things Christie has done, but in the opposite direction. I don't care how many studies they've done, or how much digging or construction, I would stop a massive highway project dead. I would raise tolls and the gas tax, and try to hold train and bus fares down. I'm guessing that most of the folks at Tri-State would too.

There are two important differences, though. One is that I wouldn't lie about it like Christie has, cry about the attacking budget goblins, and slather it in fiscal-responsibility flim-flam sauce.

The other difference is that I would be promoting transit because it's used by New Jersey's poorest residents. I would be promoting transit and cutting roads in order to get people out of their cars, which would decrease pollution, increase efficiency, reduce carnage, combat obesity and strengthen the downtown cores of New Jersey's many beautiful towns and cities.

As far as I can tell, Christie doesn't care about pollution, energy dependency, carnage, obesity or downtown businesses. He's cutting transit and promoting driving because "we" (he and the people who voted for him) drive, and "they" take the train. He's perfectly happy to pay for infrastructure and state services, but only for "us."

The Christian Science Monitor recently contrasted the ARC Tunnel cancellation with the breakthrough in the construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel under Switzerland. Like the commentators I listed in the second paragraph, they get it exactly wrong: "The difference between the Swiss and New Jersey examples is this: One shows vision and a commitment to invest in the future, while the other shows shortsightedness." No, the difference between the Swiss and New Jersey examples (as well as the other examples they give in California and Pennsylvania) is that in Switzerland, "we" ride the train, but for Christie, for Meg Whitman in California, and for the Pennsylvania legislature, trains are for "them." We're still building lots of nice things for drivers.

Just as with Paul Ryan's tax cuts for "us" and sacrifices for "them," these budget goblins are a phantom menace, aimed at distracting us from the real issue: the upper classes want more services and don't want to pay for them, and they don't think the lower classes deserve what they're getting. That's what this is about, and you can see it if you don't have transportation myopia.

Five things that Sadik-Khan can do for pedestrians

Like most livable streets and transit advocates in the New York area, I'm a big fan of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. If I didn't already think that Bill Thompson was a clueless blowhard, I would vote for anybody but him because he's promised to fire Sadik-Khan if he ever becomes Mayor. She has done a tremendous amount to make this city more livable, more environmentally friendly, and safer. I'm particularly pleased by the improvements to Broadway between Columbus Circle and Madison Square, by Summer Streets, and by the 34th Street bus lane. I'm looking forward to Phase 2 of the 34th Street plan, and to extensions of Summer Streets and the Broadway boulevard.

Still, there are some more things that could make things a lot better for pedestrians. Some of them seem pretty simple to me, others a lot more complicated. I'm guessing that she's considered most of them, and that there's some political reason why Bloomberg can't support her on them. Still, these are things I hope I will see in the next four years or so.

1. Remove the barricades: During the 1997 Christmas shopping season, NYPD Chief Allan Hoehl decided to try preventing pedestrians from crossing at certain corners in Midtown Manhattan. A few months later, Acting Transportation Commissioner Richard Malchow made these barricades permanent. They force pedestrians to go several yards out of their way to cross the street - a small inconvenience, but a huge symbolic slap in the face to pedestrians from Giuliani's arrogant bureaucracy. Since Sadik-Khan took over the DOT, I've been expecting her to get rid of them, but they're still there.


2. Make sidewalk extensions standard: They're documented to make streets safer for pedestrians. They should probably be on every corner. In 2002, Bloomberg and Commissioner Weinshall missed a golden opportunity: they spent $218 million to install curb cuts at corners throughout the city, bowing to years of sustained pressure from disability rights advocates. They could have installed extensions at many of those corners, but of course they didn't. Sadik-Khan could make up for that by setting a policy that in the future any corners that are rebuilt will be rebuilt with extensions by default. Those extensions could be omitted if circumstances argue against them, not the other way around.


3. Summer Streets across the Manhattan Bridge: Summer Streets has proven to be wildly popular for two years running, and it's time to extend it. A large number of livable streets advocates live in Brooklyn and already travel to Manhattan for the event. We could make it easier for them to attend, and bring some tourist dollars and recreation to Brooklyn, by extending Summer Streets east on Canal Street, across the upper deck of the Manhattan Bridge and down Flatbush Avenue to Prospect Park. Sadik-Khan may need some help from the NYPD on this: I've heard that the policing costs are very expensive, but that the police staffing levels are very much overkill, and many of those cops could be replaced by event staff with no decrease in safety.


4. Widen Penn Station sidewalks: Sadik-Khan has done great things for pedestrians in Herald and Times Squares, but it's well-documented that there's a heavy crush of pedestrians around Penn Station during weekday rush hours. That's where pedestrian improvements are needed the most. Why not take a lane or two out of Seventh and Eighth Avenues and make them available for pedestrians?


5. Loading zones on every block: I've made the case that the lack of dedicated loading zones makes the city much more dangerous. The city's culture of double-parking, where "everyone does" something that's illegal and dangerous, poisons the relationship between motorists and traffic enforcement agents. Rampant double-parking encourages negligent idling practices. It also pits motorists defending their "right" to double-park against pedestrians who want narrower streets to discourage speeding, and cyclists who want protected bike lanes. The DOT is constantly reconfiguring parking on blocks around the city. What if every time they did that they set aside a space or two that was only available for loading and unloading, maximum occupancy fifteen minutes?

Terminal approach capacity and the Paris RER

In thinking about Paris and New York in the context of Alon Levy's guest posts at the Transport Politic (one, two, and my reply, and Jarrett's), one of the big differences that struck me between the two commuter rail networks is the approach tracks to the stations. Paris's are huge: the six main line stations had between six (Austerlitz) and fifteen (Nord) from the city limits to the stations. This number of tracks continues until the various lines branch off. Only the small lines had less: four for Invalides, two for Vincennes and two for Sceaux.

By contrast, here in NYC, we had a maximum of four tracks at five stations: Grand Central, Penn (for the LIRR), Bay Ridge, Hoboken and Jersey City. All the rest have or had two, and the Empire line has only one track over the Spuyten Duyvil bridge.

In the comments to my previous post, Adam writes, "in order for a rail terminal to be effective, it must have six tracks going into it at least." If he's right, it's not surprising that commuter rail in New York has been less effective than in Paris. It also points to the benefits that Alon's plan could bring to commuter rail in New York.

However, I will point out another difference between Paris and New York. There were some lines that were entirely taken over by the RER, like the Sceaux line, and their central terminals were converted into simple stations on the new lines. Most of the RER is made of lines that used to terminate in one of the six main-line stations, however. Some of them were rerouted into totally new alignments within the city: for example, the Saint-Germain line was run through the RER A tunnel instead of to the Saint-Lazare station. This was essentially what the Pennsylvania Railroad did in 1910. The rest were diverted into new through-stations built underneath their former terminals, such as the RER D, which connected lines from the Nord and Lyon stations. This is more or less what the LIRR East Side Access plan is doing under Grand Central, except that the line isn't going through.

The result of this is that in Paris the capacity of the old stations is pretty much untouched. Every new RER line represented an indisputable increase in central capacity. However, Alon's plan takes capacity from the existing Penn Station trackage for the through tracks. I think that the increased capacity from through-running would more than make up for it, but I felt it was worth noting.

Someone's being proactive...

From the comments at Greater Greater Washington, MARC's expansion plan (PDF) from 2007.

Gioia Calls for Midtown Tunnel Bus

A tipster pointed me to an email from City Council Member Eric Gioia, who represents western Queens, including Long Island City. Gioia called a rally today to protest the planned closure of the #7 train for the next nine weeks between Queensboro Plaza and Times Square. Residents and businesses in southern Long Island City, which are normally just 10-15 minutes from Midtown, will have no direct subway service, instead being forced to take a shuttle bus to Queensboro Plaza and transfer to the N or Q trains. Gioia proposes several steps to mitigate the closure, similar to what the MTA did a year ago when they replaced switches in Woodside. But here's the most interesting part:

The MTA should have shuttle bus service from Grand Central
Station through the Midtown Tunnel to key #7 train stops in Queens.

It's a big deal to have a political leader talk about tunnel buses. Back in December 2007, there was talk of a Red Hook bus through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Last March, in her testimony to the City Council, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that if congestion pricing passed, the MTA would run a new bus route "from Jackson Heights to Penn Station." She didn't give any further details, and congestion pricing was never passed, so there was no bus.

In May I discussed possible Bus Rapid Transit through the tunnel, feeding into the new 34th Street Transitway (PDF). I know that Gioia is suggesting that the tunnel bus go to Grand Central, and only while #7 service is suspended. But if we had buses running through the tunnel all the time, then suspending the #7 train wouldn't be such a big deal. We'd have an alternative that everyone would know about.

It's called redundancy, and it's practiced by smart businesses all over. And in other neighborhoods there is redundancy: in Sunnyside the #7 is complemented by the Q32 and Q60 buses, in Woodside by the Long Island Railroad, and in Jackson Heights by the Queens Boulevard subway. In Hunters Point there used to be fairly decent ferry service, but nowadays it's very infrequent and doesn't come at all in the wintertime.

Running buses through the tunnel is really a no-brainer. Especially with the 34th Street transitway to speed the buses across Manhattan, and on the weekend when congestion is light, you could really get people to Penn Station pretty quickly, not to mention the other subway stops along 34th Street.

I put together the following map (based on maps from Openstreetmap.org) to show possible bus routes to places that Google Maps indicates are ten minutes from Penn Station.



Clockwise from the top, they are: Broadway and 21st Street in Astoria, the 39th Avenue N/W station in Dutch Kills, 46th and Greenpoint in Sunnyside, and Greenpoint and Manhattan Avenues in Greenpoint. Google Maps says that it could take up to 30 minutes with traffic, but again this is on the weekend and along the transitway. Obviously, if the buses make several stops it will slow things down, but I'd venture to say that you could still get from one end to the other in half an hour.

You could have other routes that don't go as far, like a bus up Fifth Street or Center Boulevard in Hunters Point to serve all the new development, and another up Vernon Boulevard to serve the commercial strip - or even a loop serving both.

If you wanted to go farther afield, here are destinations that Google Maps says will take fifteen minutes, or up to 40 minutes with traffic:



They are Astoria Park, Junction Boulevard in Elmhurst, 69th and Metropolitan in Middle Village, Bushwick Terminal, and Bedford and Metropolitan in Williamsburg.

These bus routes would provide robust redundancy during subway outages, add more travel options, and potentially serve areas that don't have very good transit right now. Following Gioia's request, the MTA should at least implement a Hunters Point loop that would connect Vernon and Center boulevards to 34th Street, and another one connecting Greenpoint with Penn Station.

Long term, the MTA should look into implementing some of these as new routes on a daily basis. They may not have the money, in which case I say: look to the Ravitch plan!

You Don't Eat the Stone

The folktale of Stone Soup goes roughly like this: a hungry traveler with no money enters a village. The villagers, mistrusting the traveler, hide their food and tell the traveler they have nothing to give. The traveler pokes around in the main square and finds a stone. He asks the villagers to lend him a pot and starts boiling water, which arouses their curiosity. He tells them that he's going to cook stone soup, but that it would be better with a little salt. One of the villagers brings him salt, and then he says it would be even better with a some herbs. This continues until they've brought him the ingredients for a hearty stew, which he shares with them. They offer him a bed to sleep in and give him their wifi passcode so he can email his wife.

The next morning the traveler moves on. In some versions, he puts the stone in his bag to make soup from the next time; in others he gives it to the appreciative townspeople. But in no version does he actually eat it. This is very important. Remember this.

There are many versions of this story, but they all have the same moral: what you can't get by asking directly, you may be able to get just by hanging around and starting an interesting project.

What does this have to do with the Moynihan Station project, you ask? Well, here's the thing: do you think anyone really wants to catch a train in the old Farley Post Office? Look at this picture of the old Penn Station:



Now look at this picture of the Farley Post office by Tom Fletcher:



Whee! Look at all those steps. Now let's say you've been working hard all day at an office nearby and you just want to get on the 5:20, crack your Bud and stare at the embankments for an hour. Are you going to want to walk up all those steps? Now imagine that you're going up to Brattleboro for the three-day weekend with your big wheelie suitcase. You don't want to climb steps! Look back at the photo for the old Penn Station. No steps! Do you know any other train station with steps like that?

The Farley Post Office made a good post office, and it might make a good mall or a good facade for an arena, but it won't make a good train station. Catching a train there would be more glamorous than scuttling like a rat through the Central Corridor, but it won't be any more convenient, especially with the multiple levels that are planned.

Going back to my post from yesterday about what we really want from Penn Station: an end to the scramble, better connections, higher ceilings and daylight. Maybe a nice symbol or two. But this report from the Regional Plan Association doesn't hide the fact that Senator Moynihan's original plan would not have helped much with any of those things. What would be really nice would be to have the old Penn Station back, in its original place next to the Seventh Avenue Subway.

The problem is that they didn't just tear down Penn Station. They built two of the ugliest buildings in the city. These buildings, Two Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden #3, are so bland that they don't even make lists of the ugliest buildings in the city. People don't want to think about them enough to write them down. But they're there, and they're used, practically every day, for all kinds of important things. I've been to Madison Square Garden three times: for the circus, the Garlic Festival and a Nader rally. We need to keep Madison Square Garden in business so that New York may someday host the Garlic Festival again. And what about the offices in Two Penn Plaza?

Well, it turns out that last year Shelly Silver tipped a nice plateful of stew beef into our pot. He convinced the Dolans, the owners of Madison Square Garden, to move it to the Post Office and got some developers to promise that they would build lots more office buildings. Two Penn Plaza may wind up staying, but the Garden will be gone, which will let the government rebuild Penn Station as "Moynihan East." The Municipal Art Society has the rendering.

There are lots of problems with the plan. I won't go into them here, but the Municipal Art Society is doing a good job of keeping track of them, and I encourage you to follow their blog and take action to keep the state from giving too much away to the developers.

The main issue is the cost. I think it's up to $3 billion now. Everything seems to be $3 billion: the THE THE Tunnel, the PATH upgrades, you name it. We've got declining revenues, everything is costing more, and the government is promising $3 billion left and right. The total cost for this project, including all the office buildings that Stephen Ross is drooling over, comes to $14 billion, but my understanding is that the developrs will pay the $11 billion.

What's one way to save money? Drop the Post Office conversion. It's too far from the subway, nobody wants to catch a train there, it won't get rid of the scramble. It's not the old Penn Station, and it never will be. It's got lots and lots of steps. The only people who are still clinging to it are the preservationists who are hoping that they will finally fulfill their oath and have peace. I'll tell you what, preservationists: if you just make sure that something gets built east of Eighth Avenue that has nice high ceilings, lets in natural light and doesn't look too hideous, then I will hold the oath fulfilled, and ye shall have peace and depart for ever.

As for the Farley Post Office, if we don't want to railbank it, then let the developers have it. Keep them from sullying the facade, make sure you can still buy stamps and mail things 24 hours a day, and then they can do whatever they like with it. Make them pay for it, though; that would bring down the price of rebuilding Penn Station, maybe even to something affordable.

Remember: nobody ate the stone. Would Senator Moynihan have wanted us to eat the stone? I don't think so; he was a pretty crafty guy. Let's put his name on the part east of Eighth Avenue and have done. I don't want to see tons of gubernatorial political capital expended on an empty symbol.

Farley Post Office: Thinking long-term

I've previously mentioned the plans to convert the Farley Post Office to a new Penn Station with offices, a shopping mall and a new Madison Square Garden. They're redeveloping similar stations in Philadelphia and Boston.

Ever wonder why someone would build a huge post office - covering two entire city blocks - over an active rail line in the middle of a city? There aren't that many people who need to mail packages, are they? They used to sort mail there? Why not stick the sorting facility somewhere out by the highway, where people can get to it easily?

Of course the answer is that mail didn't use to come into the city by highway, it came by train. Most of the businesses were a short distance from the post office, and many got their mail by handcart. But that's long ago, and trucks and airplanes are the answer to everything!

Are they? With the price of gas continuing to go up, shouldn't we be trying to find a more efficient way to distribute the mail? Shouldn't we think about "railbanking" our post offices, so that if there comes a time when we need a distribution center on top of a train line, we can reactivate them?

Penn Station: What do we Really Want?

In previous posts I've discussed the destruction of the old Penn Station and Senator Moynihan's vision for a new Penn Station. In that last post, I pointed out that the benefits of the planned Moynihan Station would be largely symbolic. Yesterday the Observer ran a report on the current troubles that the recession is causing for the plans. So let's go back to the drawing board (for a moment) and ask ourselves, what kinds of benefits could we actually hope for?

I've taken trains from Penn Station on many a pleasure excursion, and I've commuted regularly through there. I'm just one guy, but I do keep my eyes and ears open. The biggest problem I've had at Penn Station is the scramble. Because there aren't enough tracks, the tracks are posted close to departure time. This means that everyone's standing around in the halls (we can't sit because they took the benches out) until the train is announced, and then they all swarm towards the track, anxious to make sure they get a seat. Contrast this with Washington Union Station, or Grand Central, where the tracks are announced half an hour or more before departure. People go sit on the train and wait; it's much more relaxed and restful.

There's not much that can be done about this right now. The LIRR/Grand Central link will help, and so will the "THE Tunnel," to open up some track space. But that's a short-term improvement; the plan is for those tracks to be used up pretty quickly with trains from the LIRR Third Track. The planned Moynihan Station will do nothing for that problem.

One often-touted benefit of the planned station is more waiting areas. It's true that the halls and waiting areas of Penn Station used to feel very crowded. But since the LIRR and New Jersey Transit have expanded their waiting areas and added stairs, they don't feel dangerous or overwhelming anymore. There's almost always enough space. Not really any need for more space at this point - until you get more track.

The connections are good, but they could be better. You can get to the Seventh and Eighth Avenue subways, but the Gimbel's tunnel that connects you to the Sixth Avenue trains has been closed for years. The main entrance on 32nd and Seventh should have a prominent subway entrance, but doesn't. There's no connection to the street at 31st and Seventh; you have to either go out on 32nd Street or the pre-September 11th taxi stand. However, the LIRR has built a connection to 34th Street, and NJ Transit is planning to build a connection to 31st Street near Seventh Avenue. If anything, Moynihan Station would make things worse, because some people will get off the train and be over by Ninth Avenue, far from the subways and shops. Maybe shops will be built by then, but it's a hard sell.

The main thing that the modern Penn Station lacks is high ceilings and sunlight. It's true that there are relatively high ceilings in the Amtrak main hall, and NJ Transit and the LIRR have built some fairly large spaces. But they have almost no natural light, and a large part of the waiting still goes on down in the lower corridors, where the ceilings are low and it's all fluorescent.

This is one thing that Moynihan's plan offered us, and it's a big deal. Can we have it for a reasonable price?

Of Rats and Gods

This is the second of a planned series of posts about New York's Penn Station; the previous one gave some background about the original station and its demolition in 1964.

As I mentioned, the destruction of Penn Station inspired the historical preservationists to make sure that nothing like it could happen again. Much was made of the structure that replaced it. On the west side of the superblock, the fourth Madison Square Garden arena was built; on the block between 33rd and 34th Streets, the One Penn Plaza office tower and on the east, Two Penn Plaza.

All the tracks and platforms remained, but when passengers climbed the stairs, instead of emerging into the Great Hall, they found themselves in a maze of low passageways filled with fast-food restaurants, newsstands and convenience stores. There were no grand spaces and no daylight. In the famous words of architectural historian Vincent Scully, "One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat."

I was born several years after the demolition of the original Penn Station, so I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my understanding is that none of the changes affected the physical process of getting off the train and onto the subway, or out onto the street. It was just as convenient (or inconvenient) as it had been since the Eighth Avenue Subway was opened in 1932. This is the central observation I want to make in this post: from the point of view of actually getting from one place to another, the difference was entirely psychological, and almost entirely symbolic.

In fact, in the past ten years, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road have both added new stairs and new concourses. While they have not been able to bring daylight in, they have at least raised some of the ceilings and made it less cramped and more convenient. They're not finished, either: New Jersey Transit plans to build a new entrance to its concourse to reduce crowding at the 32nd Street entrance.

Let's keep thinking about the practical side of getting from one place to another. I don't have any data on the final destinations of people coming in to Penn Station, so if anyone reading this can point me to the data, I'd appreciate it. However, many of the arguments for the LIRR East Side Access project state that a large number of LIRR commuters are actually heading for destinations near Grand Central. In any case, some very large number of Penn Station travelers change to the subway. There are job sites nearby, but they're a small percentage of the commuter destinations. The Javits Center is a few blocks away, but they're long, unpleasant blocks.

There may be more job sites within walking distance in the future. The current $14 billion "Moynihan Station" plan includes several new office buildings to be built in the immediate area, and the "Hudson Yards" plans call for office and residential development between Penn Station and the river. Even with all that development, though, the vast majority of the people who pass through Penn Station will be transferring to subways or walking to job sites east or north of the station. Very few will be headed west.

This is the critical thing: the new Moynihan Station, as planned, will bring almost no practical benefit to people traveling through Penn Station. The benefits will be almost entirely psychological and symbolic.

I'm very aware of the importance of psychological and symbolic victories, and I think it would be great to bring light back into Penn Station, to put an end to a shameful episode in the city's building history, and to restore to rail passengers their rightful status as gods.

But is it worth fourteen two billion dollars? By comparison, it's estimated that it would cost $13.3 billion to build the entire Second Avenue Subway, from 125th Street to Hanover Square.

New York's Waterloo Station?

One of the most infamous moments in modernism was the demolition of Penn Station in New York, and almost as bad, the construction of Madison Square Garden and Penn Plaza in its place. It shocked people so much at the time that it launched the historical preservation movement.

In fact, for historical preservationists it was a humiliating defeat - not so much a Waterloo, because they have since gone on to many victories, including Grand Central Station, but a Franco-Prussian War, or a Vietnam, a humiliation resulting in an obsession with the event and a desire to somehow "undo" it. Kind of like Brooklyn's loss of the Dodgers, or the abandonment of the construction of the Second Avenue Subway.

In the 1980s, the preservationists acquired a champion in Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was probably looking for a way to concretely mark a legacy of his 24 years in the Senate. Facing Madison Square Garden to the west was Penn Station's twin, the James Farley Post Office. But since the Post Office had almost entirely switched from using trains to using trucks and airplanes to transport mail, the large mail-sorting facility in the Post Office didn't need to be there anymore. Moynihan (with an advisor, perhaps?) saw an opportunity: if the mail facilities were moved out of the Post Office, it could be renovated into a new Penn Station. It had a similar façade, also designed by McKim, Mead and White, and was of a similar size.

Since Moynihan died in 2003, his daughter Maura has been working to keep his idea on track. It's not easy: between former governor Pataki's attempt to arrange a groundbreaking ceremony before leaving office to the ambitions of the various real estate owners and developers in the area, the project is being pulled in several different directions.

I've got a lot to say about this, but the rest will have to wait. For now I'll just say that it's all very well for the historical preservationists and the developers to have their say, but there's a conspicuous absence of any voices of people who will actually use the station on a regular basis. In the Observer interview, Ms. Moynihan says that "it's a transportation project first and foremost," and I hope she does keep that perspective.