I agree 100% with Henry Grabar on this one. Ever since I heard many years ago about the plan to blog a few billion dollars moving NYC’s Penn Station to a prettier but less convenient location, I’ve grimaced. Big shots really love to spend our money on fancy architecture, don’t they?
As I wrote a few years ago, my guess is that the new Penn Station will be a lot more like an airport. Bright and airy, some top-end stores, it would look beautiful if it weren’t filled with thousands of people trying to get on and off the train in rush hour.
Here’s hoping some of our elected representatives can derail this project, as it were, or that the Amtrak management can convince them to spend these zillions on better train signals or tunnel repairs or something that’s actually useful.
P.S. This came up before and a bunch of commenters disagreed with me. I still think I’m right.
Given how many of us take the subway to get to Penn Station, I highly doubt that beauty is the most important feature on *anyone’s* mind. But it would be really nice to have a functional train service that ran efficiently, affordably, and on time.
Penn Station is god awful. Imagine two trains leaving off the same platform and passengers scrambling to get down a single NJT staircase…contrast it with a wide ramp, air and light. In statistical terms…the station was designed to accommodate 200,000 daily passengers, but it serves more than 700,000. Really, you can’t admit you’re wrong on this?
Joe:
Penn Station definitely could be improved. I just have a horrible horrible feeling that when they change Penn Station, it will be for the worse. Instead of just walking down the stairs to the track, you’ll have to walk to a “gate” and then wait there. Instead of several entry points, there will just be one, with a long snaking line, like how they do it at Union Station in D.C.
The devil you know…….
Depend on how much we are willing to pay for more light etc.