
Penn Station Could Get Worse - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-10/the-most-awful-transit-center-in-america-could-get-unimaginably-worse
======
kindatrue
"Let's build a new shiny station" (that would make everyone walk even further
to transfer to the subways to get them to work) - tons of interest! tons of
excitement!

"Let's rebuild 2 tunnels. And maybe build 2 more." (Before they collapse and
destroy the economy.) - Boring. Not sexy. No photo-ops.

And that's the problem with humans. :(

~~~
mancerayder
It's a problem with American politics. While Penn Station falls apart, London
and Paris have seen nothing but infrastructure improvements and upgrades.

There are of course many reasons for this, but I assure you not all human
societies are clearly hostile to public infrastructure spending and anything
that isn't private and for-profit.

In the years I lived in London I observed the Tube going from constant outages
and weekend shutdowns, to later trains, more frequent trains, and new
infrastructure projects like Crossrail. DLR, a conductorless system I rode
daily,was only a few decades old.

As a NYer I'm deeply embarrassed by having seen first hand over 20 years the
slow decline of the transportation system here. It's embarrassing when family
and friends visit from overseas and display disgust and shock. NY comes off as
wealthy and clean in popular media there, but the reality is closer to a Third
World one.

~~~
djsumdog
Chicago's infrastructure is falling apart as well. The L hasn't been extended
in decades, and there are no plans to electrify the rest of the suburban rail
lines. The city is corrupt and constantly out of money. Every time they raise
revenue, it disappears, with the streets full of potholes and non-existent
lines between car lanes.

The only city that's truly expanding their rail in a significant way is
Seattle. With the ST3 project and the Redmond Transit corridor, hopefully
they'll see some relief from the insane housing prices. But they needed that
expansion two decades ago.

Don't even get me started on Caltrain.

Everybody is going crazy over self driving vehicles, but if we do get them,
they won't be a reality for at least 10 ~ 15 years. It's a more difficult
problem than people think, and all that money could be put into fixing and
expanding our crumbling rail.

I don't understand why America hates rail so much.

~~~
lostmsu
Re: Seattle: 15 years for two rail lines is a joke. Assuming they actually
build it.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
It is taking way too long. But there are reasons. (1) There is a limit on the
amount of bonds that they can have bid out at a time. (2) they had to do a lot
of tunneling. (3) the next segment involves building over a floating bridge.
Light rail over a floating bridge is non-trivial. I do wish they'd increase
their ability to do simultaneous work though, I'll be dead before it gets near
my house.

~~~
lostmsu
For 3), there was recently an article, that highest cost in US rail projects
is buying land. 3 kinda offsets this.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
Building rail on a non-fixed "floating bridge" is probably expensive too :-)

~~~
djsumdog
It will be the first floating bridge rail in the world. They've already built
the test track, so so hopefully they have an accurate idea of how much the
production segments will cost:

[https://vimeo.com/163631993](https://vimeo.com/163631993)

------
grecy
It's staggering to spend time in some of the US's biggest transit hubs - LAX,
Penn, the NYC airports, and then go and spend time in some around the world.

The US has a lot of catching up to do on it's basic infrastructure.

~~~
lazerpants
The NYC airports are strange because certain terminals are fantastic at all
three airports, and other are glorified Greyhound stations.

~~~
hessproject
LaGuardia is funny because you go to terminal C and D, newly renovated with
nice restaurants and fancy tablets at every table

...Or you could walk 10 feet to terminal A and B and get drenched by the
gallon of water leaking out of the ceiling

~~~
ravitation
Those leaking ceilings are almost to the point where they could be classified
as NYC landmarks...

------
nikanj
Somehow this reminds me of the previous story on NY infrastucture (
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subw...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-
heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-
news&referer=https://news.ycombinator.com/) )

We were able to both fund and construct these tunnels a century ago, but
somehow they now seem hopelesly out of our reach.

~~~
jandrese
Well yeah, we had to give that money to the "job creators". Presumably they
will be stepping up to rebuild the infrastructure any day now.

~~~
wavefunction
They'll be selling us public/private infrastructure funded by the 1.5 Trillion
USD levy on the deficit via the recent 'tax reform.'

------
taion
This is a fairly poorly-informed piece, especially in light of the recent NY
Times piece on construction costs in the New York area:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html)

Alon Levy, who was the source for many of the initial investigations into high
costs here, argues quite convincingly that, at the current projected price
tag, Gateway is not a justifiable project:
[https://pedestrianobservations.com/2015/11/13/when-theres-
no...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2015/11/13/when-theres-nothing-left-
to-burn-you-have-to-set-money-on-fire/)

The real problem here is that ARC, Gateway, &c. all have unjustifiably huge
multi-billion-dollar price tags. We only have this problem in the first place
because of the absurd construction costs in New York.

Additionally, the writer does not appear to have reached out to any
independent transit people. Penn Station is actually less busy than, say,
Châtelet-les-Halles in Paris, which has many, many fewer tracks. The biggest
reason that it doesn't work well is just organizational – Penn Station would
be able to handle its current capacity just fine if it did things that were
standard elsewhere like through-running.

Lastly, neither Moynihan Station nor many of the Penn Station revamp ideas are
well-regarded in transit circles. As noted, Moynihan Station makes people walk
an extra long block. The original Penn Station, meanwhile, was not
particularly well-regarded for things like pedestrian flow. It had a beautiful
waiting room and some great architecture, but it's generally been regarded as
being mediocre functionally, especially compared to Grand Central, which is
both beautiful and has very good pedestrian flow.

------
malchow
A non-profit architectural foundation of which I am part is proposing to
rebuild the original beaux arts Penn Station:
[https://www.civicart.org/rebuilding-new-yorks-original-
penns...](https://www.civicart.org/rebuilding-new-yorks-original-pennsylvania-
station/)

More: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/campaigners-step-up-fight-to-
re...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/campaigners-step-up-fight-to-restore-new-
york-penn-station-1511433000)

If there's demand, I could ask the team/architects to do an ama of some kind.

~~~
kindatrue
But that's the problem - people are excited about building a new station on
top.

But people aren't excited about rebuilding the 2 highly damaged tunnels
underneath the river (or build some new ones).

Stuff like that is hard to sell because it doesn't capture people's
imagination or attention - nor does it provide for great photo-ops. :(

------
meri_dian
In order to avoid death by 1,000 cases of crumbling infrastructure, the US
should redirect $100 billion in military spending per year to infrastructure
spending.

We don't even need to make that redirect last longer than a few years to fund
most of our pressing infrastructure projects.

And our military would still have a budget $300 billion greater than the next
biggest military spender (China)!!!

~~~
pishpash
Let the contracts have as much graft as exists in Afghanistan and Iraq and the
contractors _might_ be interested.

------
mattbuilds
I currently commute in on the LIRR everyday and man is it rough. I'm pretty
sure my train is delayed more often than on time. I usually give my mom a call
in the morning just to say hi and check in. When my train does arrive on time
she will go, "Oh you're early today".

I fear it could really hurt the economic activity of NYC. Take me for example,
I like my job and I like the city, but I'm looking to work remotely or on Long
Island rather than commuting. It's long but not so bad if everything is going
well. The problem is the lack of consistency makes it unbearable. You never
know when your train is going to be delayed and you're stuck on a packed
train, or worse, stuck in Penn Station for an unknown amount of time. Life is
too short to spend it like that.

~~~
lr4444lr
Cheer up. You could be taking the subway. :-)

~~~
mattbuilds
It's all still the MTA. I used to live in NYC and took the subway everyday so
I have some experience with both. Neither are great, but let's just say I miss
my old commute.

------
rayiner
> A few weeks later, a sewage pipe spewed waste onto a heavily trafficked
> concourse—an honest-to-God shitstorm. “I’m like, ‘Literally, it’s raining in
> Penn Station,’ ” recalls Marigo Mihalos, a booking agent from New Jersey who
> witnessed the fecal deluge on her way to work.

For those who have never been to Penn Station, this is an accurate description
of it on a typical summer day.

~~~
acjohnson55
I commute via Penn Station, and while I think it's a labyrinthine and
Kafkaesque human cattle pen, I've never seen anything like that, let alone
routinely.

------
zornb
Somewhat surprized that the article didn't touch on the expanse and glory of
the old Penn Station that was torn down in the 60's. More information here:
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/penn/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/penn/)

~~~
nikanj
It did mention it, although it didn’t go into details: ”His tourgoers are
among the many New Yorkers—and others with an interest in urban planning—who
know that today’s decrepit facility sits beneath what used to be a gorgeous
hall, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla. It was demolished in the
1960s, to the dismay of preservationists. Rivers leads his flock through
modern-day Penn, pointing out vestiges of the old place: an original staircase
leading down to the tracks; a Long Island Rail Road waiting room; a ghostly,
red-lettered sign for the long-gone Pennsylvania Railroad.”

------
briandear
Why don’t they raise ticket prices? Or add a “Penn Station Facilities Fee” to
tickets? I’m still paying a ridiculous “9-11 Security Fee” on airline routes
that land in the US and I also pay a ridiculous “solidarity fee” for airline
tickets in France.

Why not make Penn users pay for using Penn?

~~~
vonmoltke
A similar fee already exists for NJ Transit's Newark Airport station. Trips
with that station as a terminus have an extra fee attached, which in turn pays
for the train that takes people from the station to the airport terminals.

~~~
lazerpants
The Airtrain is the worst though, it's slow, and narrows to one lane while
crossing the freeway (so you have to wait for trains to pass), it's
excruciating to take if you're worried about being late for a flight. And it
costs $5.50. Which is about what a taxi from the NJT station to the airport
should cost.

------
nashashmi
And yet relatively speaking, it works a lot better than PABT. Penn Station has
its short comings but it functions well enough that I can still say it is more
convenient to go to Penn Station than it is do drive to NYC.

I have been using Penn Station since 2010. The first problem that started was
trains backing up because of tunnel traffic. The second problem started
happening in 2014 where trains were backing up in the tunnel because of
platform traffic. The third problem started coming when the tracks (not
trains) started breaking down and then you had derailments, collisions,
breakdowns, etc.

Penn station just never got a break in usage. And never got a reprieve with
accidents. It always worked at 110% and whenever repairs were being made,
travelers complained because it caused daily delays.

What we really need is a whole brand new station, a whole brand new tube, and
a whole bunch of brand new trains to put the other ones out of service and
under repair. Only then will commuters and NYC goers be happy.

~~~
mhb
Let me help: PABT == Port Authority Bus Terminal

------
konschubert
To state the obvious:

Build two new tubes besides the existing ones, the take the existing ones out
of service, renovate them, bam.

Now you've got 4 (?) tubes and much fewer delays.

~~~
tootie
I don't know if you read the article at all, but the governors of NY and NJ
had an agreement with the Obama admin to jointly fund just one tunnel (total
cost $30B) and Trump pulled the rug out from under them. Building tunnels
under a river isn't simple.

~~~
dhuramas
We should get Elon to do it.

~~~
kalleboo
Elon won't save you here. You gotta wait for his magic gridlock-reducing self-
driving cars.

[https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-
mass-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-
transit/)

“I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on
something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to
leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it
to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” he continued. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it.
And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial
killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport,
that goes where you want, when you want.”

When the audience member responded that public transportation seemed to work
in Japan, Musk shot back, “What, where they cram people in the subway? That
doesn’t sound great.”

~~~
paulie_a
Honestly I agree with his statements 100 percent. Mass transit done well is
mediocre at best compared to individual transportation. Especially if someone
else is driving. I would rather take an uberpool over the CTA any day of the
week, it's simply faster and generally the same price

~~~
amorphid
I live in San Francisco, and the public transit is useable compared to most
other parts of California. Recently I visited Copenhagen, Denmark, and I found
the public transit to be much nicer than mediocre (even if I couldn't by train
tickets with a sign-only-no-PIN American credit card!)

------
baud147258
As for the train picture that's supposedly packed and dreary, it's still miles
ahead of some of the oldest trains operating in some of the lines around
Paris, which are ~50 years old and when they are packed, it's people standing
up from one end of the wagon to the other. At least they're in the process of
being replaced (the first new trains were delivered last month).

Still I'm glad that Paris has a good public railway system, even if the
improvement work in the summer can be really annoying (like when they are
cutting the West-East line for one month in Paris).

~~~
baud147258
I was criticizing the disconnect between the picture and the caption. I'm
pretty sure Amtrak has trains that are just as bad as some of those in France.

------
ShabbosGoy
Luckily, when I lived in NYC back in 2012, I never had to cross paths with
Penn Station.

Mainly, I’d use the PATH train from Jersey City to 33rd Street, which ran
frequently and mostly on-time.

The one time I had to visit a friend in Long Island, Penn Station wasn’t the
horror show the article suggests. Then again, it was nearly 6 years ago, so
it’s plausible that it has degraded. Fingers crossed that The Boring Company
can actually execute.

~~~
nerfhammer
Note that you were going east and didn't have to go through the North River
Tunnels, and I'm guessing, not at rush hour.

PATH uses a different set of tunnels, and actually has four of them instead of
just two.

------
acjohnson55
From the title, I knew it could be one of two things: New York Penn Station or
Port Authority Bus Terminal. Both are nightmarescapes.

------
bob_theslob646
I applaud bloomberg for writing about this. The more these problems are talked
about, hopefully, will result in some for of change. (The NY Times has done a
great job in the NY region shining a light on subways, MTA, see below for
stories linked.)

It is always incredibly challenging to have to design solutions ontop of
exisiting,immovable, infrastructure and old stubborn corrupt people.

Regarding the article, these statements are absurd.

> K. Jane Williams, deputy administrator of the Federal Transit
> Administration, sent a curtly worded letter to New York and New Jersey
> officials that snidely made the deal sound made-up.

> “We consider it unhelpful to reference a nonexistent ‘agreement’ rather than
> directly address the responsibility for funding a local project where 9 out
> of 10 passengers are local transit riders,” she wrote.

With New York residents rated 44 out of 50 on Wallet Hub's "2017’s Most &
Least Federally Dependent States " state residents being dependent on the
federal government, meaning NY residents give more than they get back ( Scale
: 1 = giving less and being more dependent on federal funds versus 50 being
more independent and giving more than it receives, being less dependent on
federal funds[1] ) as well as other nearby states, such as Massachusetts(46),
New Jersey(49) and Delaware(50), I find it incredibly irritating for them to
make it as if people who rely on that form of transit do not matter especially
with transportation being a way to get out of poverty. [2][3]

So much for infrastructure spending....

[1]([https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-
the...](https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-
government/2700/))

[2] ([https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-
eme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-
crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html))

[3] ([https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/05/25/public-
transp...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/05/25/public-
transportation-can-ride-out-poverty/KtzBMWFo1Xpsqks7NfbYxL/story.html))

Regarding Amtrak,the author in my opinion should have explained how the Amtrak
works/run. They suffer because they do not have funding, but lack the ability
to be forced to innovate because of virtually zero
competition.([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Controversy))

To understand how Amtrak works, I suggest reading this.
([https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/amtrak-when-political-
absur...](https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/amtrak-when-political-absurdity-
meets-government-inefficiency/))

>NY Times on MTA

([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/opinion/nyc-leaders-
subwa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/opinion/nyc-leaders-subway-
mta.html)) ([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/magazine/subway-new-
york-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/magazine/subway-new-york-city-
public-transportation-wealth-inequality.html))
([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html))
([https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/22/nyregion/what...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/22/nyregion/what-
would-it-take-to-fix-new-yorks-subway.html))
([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/nyregion/system-
failure-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/nyregion/system-failure-new-
york-subway-maintenance-misery.html))

------
perseusprime11
Penn Station really sucks. It feels like the third world where trains are
always delayed, passengers are shoving and pushing each other. Imagine the
plight of employees working in Manhattan having to tell their upper east sides
bosses why they are late every other day.

------
dundercoder
The US’s record of reliable and efficient public transit is abysmal. Out west
here you’re lucky to even catch a bus that takes an hour and fifteen minutes
to get you where a 15 minute car ride would.

~~~
friedButter
> Out west here

Dont have a lot of experience with US, but Seattle and Redmond (which are on
the west coast) had pretty awesome public transport.. I was able to navigate
it pretty easily even though it was my first time in US, and it went pretty
much everywhere

~~~
electricslpnsld
Hell, when I was living in Portland the public transit was totally reasonable.
Getting to the airpot was a peace of cake, taking the bus from North Portland
to my job on the other side of the river was easy, my coworkers who took light
rail in from the burbs rarely had issues. Overall it was pleasant experience.

------
Bahamut
To contrast with Penn Station, just ~10-15 blocks to the northeast you have
Grand Central, an iconic train station that is much better in almost every
way.

------
booleandilemma
Before clicking I thought the article was going to be about the Port Authority
Bus Terminal.

~~~
zaphod12
Spoken as someone who has not had to use Penn Station!

~~~
vonmoltke
I have used both extensively, and PABT was my first inclination as well.

~~~
uptown
I've witnessed active hallway defecation at both locations, so I think we can
agree there's a case to be made for either facility.

------
jbob2000
Woah, after reading this article, my eyes have some lingering "lines", really
messing with my head right now. Note to journalists/designers: DO NOT use
black background with sharp contrasting white text.

~~~
glenneroo
Yeah that formatting was atrocious. Scrolling while reading was causing me to
see flickering white "blobs" flowing between the text. Even afterwards I'm
still seeing remnants of those white blobs. Time for a computer break!

------
CaptainZapp

      Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers 
      every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined
    

That would surprise me.

According to Wikipedia Zurich main station served on average 441,400 per
working day. And that's in a city of roughly 400'00 people (or 1.2M if you
count the metropolitan area).

That's peanuts compared to monsters like Shinjuku in Tokyo, which was used on
average by 3.64 million people per day in 2007.

So I'm wondering where they come up with the "western hemisphere busiest train
station"

~~~
arethuza
Zurich, Tokyo and pretty much every other large train station aren't in the
"Western Hemisphere":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere)

~~~
alaxsxaq
Someone was really reaching to find meaningless superlatives. Wouldn't it be
better to compare this station to stations handling similar passenger numbers?

I frequently use Penn Station, Union Station (DC), and 30th Street Station
(Philadelphia). All of them are overloaded, but things like waiting areas,
bathrooms, food, ticketing aren't really that much worse in Penn Station.
Aesthetics, on the other hand...

~~~
icegreentea2
I think it's fine. While the article spends some time talking about how shitty
looking Penn Station is, I felt like it delivered its emphasis on how the
actual transit part of it is slow motion dying. Like tunnels literally
creeping towards collapse. The comparison to airports I think is fine for
envisioning scale in an American context.

Like all of the station level stuff is important, but I felt like the article
was more of a plea to make sure that we'd at least fix the actual track and
tunnel level problems before NYC gets strangled.

~~~
ghaff
Yeah, and there have been and continue to be ongoing improvements in the
layout and general rundownedness of the concourses. I was pleasantly surprised
the last time I was there. Would I like to snap my fingers and conjure up old
Penn Station to replace the soulless crap built on Penn Station's air rights?
Sure, who wouldn't. But the crumbling infrastructure (to say nothing of the
crowded platforms underground, etc.) is the bigger problem.

------
OliverJones
This is all part of the long-standing "taxation is theft" meme that infected
the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are many reasons we can't
have nice things. One such reason is our collective unwillingness to pay for
them.

~~~
turc1656
_" This is all part of the long-standing "taxation is theft" meme that
infected the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s"_

No, it's not. This is all part of the scam politicians have been running on
the public for decades. Namely taking taxpayer money earmarked for specific
purposes (i.e. maintenance) and then not using it for those things. Then they
turn around and say "we don't have enough money, we need to raise taxes to pay
for these unforeseen costs", even though the costs were completely and
entirely foreseeable. Also, let's not forget the egregious waste on
construction that is rampant in publicly funded projects, with NYC being the
worst offender of them all. Case in point -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html)

~~~
tabeth
I agree with you, however, how would you propose that we ensure compliance in
respect to money being used for intended purposes?

~~~
thanatropism
Privatization.

~~~
brewdad
Didn't we give telcos a ton of money in the 90s to ensure fiber to the
premises everywhere? How did that work out? Privatization still requires
oversight.

~~~
armenarmen
We did it with phones in general and the cost of service plummeted as the
quality rose.

~~~
empthought
That's just the telco taking credit for what microchip manufacturers have
achieved.

------
briandear
> In the era of climate change, hurricanes are becoming stronger and more
> frequent.

? [1]

[1]
[https://www.wunderground.com/education/webster.asp](https://www.wunderground.com/education/webster.asp)

