A good book on Pennsylvania Station NY.

If you liked that book, The book:

Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels

Apr 19, 2007

I bought that book years ago. it has an interesting comparison to the original to present proposals, which have since changed from when the book was published.

Lorraine Deihl's 'Late, Great Pennsylvania Station' and Jill Jonnes': 'Conquering Gotham' are far more in-depth about not only what it took to build, but what it took to convince NYC officials... especially the Jonnes book.

Relative to New York Pennsylvania Station, a few additional books I'd recommend are "Rails Under the Mighty Hudson" by Brian Cudahy and "Penn Station: Its Tunnels and Side Rodders" by Fred Westing. They address the building of the tunnels along with the extension, electrification and operation of the railroad into Manhattan. The station is discussed within the context of the entire project. Both titles are informative and readily available on the secondary market. The Cudahy book has been revised and updated since its original printing. It also looks at the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, now part of PATH. 

Bob 

So where do we stand with rebuilding Penn Station to an above ground showpiece?

Thanks.  I may get this.  It was a good station with a lot of history to it.  I was unaware of this book.

There was a PBS special on the building of Penn Station months ago.

I wouldn't hold my breath, they were supposed to turn part of the old Post office building across the street from Penn into a station (it had similar design to the old Penn station in many ways), and that has gone nowhere. There has been talk of building a 'new' Penn Station, letting the lease on Madison Square Garden expire, then knock it down and build a new station, but I doubt it will happen. Penn handles 500,000 people  a day, and the current station is quite honestly a hole in the ground, but I doubt there is the will to build anything better. It is kind of ironic, NYC has all this high end building going on, there is an apartment building near where I work that will be one of the tallest in the world where the apartments start at 7 million, they are planning another one just to the west of Penn Station that will be equally tall and expensive, but forget anything to do with infrastracture most people use, it sad. I suspect we will simply see the status quo going forward with Penn Station, probably better to remember the station that was then what happened to it, which was a combination of a railroad in decline, political maneuverings of all sorts, egos and so forth, that led to the wrecking ball. 

Penn Station currently sees more daily passengers than all NY airports combined.  Very sad they can't improve it quickly.  Its out of capacity and needs to have the extra platforms added before any new construction makes doing so more costly.

Quoting BigKid  "..... There has been talk of building a 'new' Penn Station, letting the lease on Madison Square Garden expire, then knock it down and build a new station, ...

Didn't the NY City Council only extend the Garden's Permit to Operate ... to 10 years? Of which one year has already passed? And, the new mayor wants the Garden to go, too. (Previous mayor Bloomberg wanted to give them 15 years to relocate).

Sadly, the Garden just completed a $1Billion renovation, too! (I'm going to a Rangers-Canadiens game next month .... We'll see what a billion dollars looks like. Lol. )

As important, or more important than, a new station .... is an additional tunnel under the Hudson River. Not just for additional capacity ... but to allow the performance of the major repairs that the present tubes are going to need. That has to be addressed.

NY Penn Station has been a interesting subject .... from the beginning to present day.

Yeah, they did. I wouldn't be too sure of that actually playing out that way, there would be nothing stopping a future city council from extending that,and given the kind of money and power the Dolans have (owners of MSG), wouldn't surprise me. 

And yes, the tunnels are a major problem, the existing tunnels are well over 100 years old, they experienced damage from Sandy, and have safety and other concerns. They were going to build 2 new tunnels, it was the so called ARC project that the governor of NJ killed (shortsightedly in my opinion, the governor is playing the old 'well, if commuting to NYC is hard, then jobs will move to NJ which is, to say the least, not very bright), claiming overruns (yet the guy sunk another 500 million to 1 billion dollars of state money into the infamous "Xanadu" shopping /entertainment monstrosity after the third developer went under, a gigantic white elephant if there ever was one), and also tried to use 500 million bucks the feds had allocated to the ARC project to use on roads......so I am not all that optimistic anyone will be building new tunnels, either, despite the fact that doing so would probably pay for itself in economic benefits those opposed can't or won't imagine. Opponents continue to see infrastructure like train stations, tunnels and mass transit as frills, while pumping a lot of money into expanding highways, building new roads and maintaining the existing ones, the complaining and moaning about how badly the roads are congested....

a couple errors in your story:

The City of New York does want to go ahead with the Moynihan Station project (the Farley PO bldg) as does Amtrak. The issue lies with where to find the funding for it, which is why is still languishes. For 40 years Congress has underfunded Amtrak.

Just because Moynihan is not front page news doesn't mean there's no progress.

Amtrak is moving ahead with their Gateway tunnels project into NY Penn, which is a far better solution to how the ARC tunnels were to be built. The ARC project at its beginning, which was a local NY/NJ project, looked a lot like the current Gateway project with direct access to NY Penn, but got modified into a dead-ended stub terminal 120 feet below ground, with no direct rail connection to NY Penn. I'd call that a colossal waste of money. Add the very real danger of a fire that far under ground and imagine what kind of tragedy that would be.

ARC got pushed to start by former NJ Governor Corzine and US Senators Lautenberg & Menendez prior to an election season for publicity purposes. Given that the late Sen. Lautenberg was a longtime staunch advocate in Congress for rail travel, his action was surprising and obvious his support was politically motivated. I lost all respect for him with that.

Governor Christie was right in cancelling ARC. The version they were building was deeply flawed for the huge amount spent. Not that I agree with diverting the funds for roadways versus saving it for the Gateway project. But the NJ legislature cannot move off the dime to address the roads... a story for another time.

So Gateway moves ahead and new finished tunnels will arrive 4-5 years after the schedule ARC would have had, now there'd be direct connection to NY Penn and 4 tunnels to handle the expected increased ridership.

Make no mistake. The new tunnels and station improvement will be built. Despite what some may say.

As for Xanadu, the state did not give any money to the developers, but did give a $500 million dollar tax abatement to the project when completed. There's a big difference.

Ron Ziel's "Steel Rails to the Sunrise" has some info and photos of Penn Station.

There's funding for Gateway? I thought they have  $100 Million out of the $20 Billion that they need. Or, whatever the figures are (even without the inevitable huge cost overruns).

Congress? Well, the midterm election will be over next week .... so  maybe they will start getting some work done. But ... I'm not counting on it. 

Its been many, many months .... and, I have not seen the man since .... but, a friend of the family's company stopped working at the site because of the lack of funding. The project is not moving along as wished/planned.

Or, did I miss it? Significant funding is in place?

The gateway project basically has no funding, it involves not just new tunnels under the Hudson, but tunnels under the Palisades, plus new bridges in NJ, and the cost is somewhere over 20 billion dollars. Interestingly, Amtrak tried to be able to use some of the work that had been done on the ARC project, but basically Christie refused them that (whether that would have make gateway happen easier, who knows).  

The problem is the same as the conversion of the Farley building and a possible new Penn Station if they decide to tear down Madison Square garden, the money. The Farley/Moynihan station was a lot more modest project than either of the other two, yet there basically is no funding for it, despite attempts to do the project that has stretched back more than 20 years. I doubt very much Amtrak is going to get money out of congress, especially not a congress that is expected to be majority republicans in both houses, given that the GOP tends to be anti mass transit and pro highways and such, I just can't see them telling Amtrak "oh, you want 20 billion for new tunnels, sure, we just love trains and we love NYC, too....". I don't know what people are smoking, but after 9/11 these are the same congressmen who were doling out huge chunks of money so that towns like Bozeman, Montana, could build up 2 Hazmat teams for use in terrorist incidents while underfunding major target cities like NY, LA, Chicago where terrorists are likely to hit, so hoping they will behave rationally, well, that is kind of stretching it. 

With Xanadu, the state kicked in 200 million in 2011 (just after ARC was cancelled) to try and finish the project (the state also was involved with the Revel casino in Atlantic City, that just went under)......it just says to the mindset that they will fund white elephant projects that can't seem to make it, yet won't fund transportation. 

The real problem is those tunnels may literally be falling apart, the head of Amtrak testified that the tunnels may need to be shut down in 20 years, and if that happens it will be a mess. 

Yet they pour billions into roadways and the airline industry.

no, the funding for Gateway is not in place. Amtrak is still fighting for it. however the developer of the west side project agreed to allow a box tunnel structure to be built before their development, which will preserve the space needed where the new tunnels enter manhattan island. that is a huge concession and positive progress.

as I said, the future economy of NYC and northern NJ hinges on not only the addition of 2 new tunnels, but the rehab of the existing 106 year old tunnels. it may be later than sooner that our elected representatives finally figure that out and cough up the cash.

What about the new platforms for Penn Station...will that space be preserved as well?

Just to set things straight, not one penny will come out of the "elected representatives" pockets!  Say taxpayers!  I predict the project will languish in a political quagmire until one of the old tunnels either collapses... or gets blown to smithereens by those nice guys from the East. 

I wouldn't count on it, not with the mentality that mass transit is a waste of money, benefits no one (or worse, that if you deny mass transit funding, all the companies located in the areas using mass transit will relocate to the sticks, ain't gonna happen), and all the other drivel. Spending on mass transit in general returns a lot more money than building new roads and the infrastructure around them, but the pro car, pro road mentality is out there and it still dominates (despite the fact that generally when you build new roads to alleviate congestion, all you end up with is more congestion). I suspect the powers that be won't realize how valuable those tunnels are until they are not available, and then will find out the real cost. Put it this way, the political climate has never been particularly far sighted, but these days it is as myopic as a bat that wears coke bottle glasses.