New Penn Station - A Vanity Project

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.

AlanB

Engineer
Honored Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2002
Messages
28,402
Location
Queens, New York
Here's an interesting article from the New York Observer that covers some interesting topics, including mentioning a few things that Jishnu and other's have pointed out that far more could & should be done with NYP than worrying about spending money on Moynihan or even a new headhouse in place of MSG.

http://observer.com/2013/08/vanity-project/
 
Ah, the Penn Station Grand Central connection with run through rises again. Another favorite boondoggle of starry eyed planners and dreamers who have never bothered to check their dreams against realities. Unfortunately they have apparently never bothered to run a single simulation, which would very quickly show that the traffic imbalance in rush hours between inbound and outbound will cause one to either run lots of empty trains long distances or gum up the works in the tunnels under Manhattan big time. Nor have they accounted for the total cost of project to actually be able to do what they suggest. It requires way way more than just drilling two tunnels connecting GCT to Penn.

I actually once upon a time built a simple simulation model and was very surprised to discover the unworkability of the traffic flow with just two tunnels connecting GCT and Penn, and no further expansion of track capacity out of GCT to the north. But of course we know that we can wish away Physics and Math when we are out dreaming.

As for run throughs, all that you can practically do is run through a subset of arriving trains during rush hours, not all of them, and that should be done ASAP. Beyond that there is not enough track capacity to run them to anywhere in the counter flow direction in LI, or in NJ. For example, people tend to forget that during rush hours NEC and Park Avenue Viaduct, both runs three tracks rush direction and one counter flow. From the NJ side, trying to run counter flow at 23tph simultaneously with rush flow will basically bring A interlocking to a standstill. Yes, it could potentially be done. But it will require track layout changes the cost of which will start paralleling the cost of building a station extension.

I am still trying to figure out whether using Chatelet Les Halles as an example to show how Penn Station should operate is merely disingenuous or the author is truly ignorant of the fundamental differences of traffic flows and track layout between the two, making the comparison more or less useless for any practical analysis.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Isn't most of the issue with Madison Square Garden not that the station can't achieve a light and airy "trainshed" feel like other stations, but rather that the support columns get in the way? I'm not an architect or engineer, and even then I wouldn't know just by looking, but aren't a majority of the columns on the platforms there for supporting the heavy MSG rather than the station itself? One thing I observed in my recent ventures through NYPS is that everyone crowds into the first handful of doors available while neglecting the doors on down the train. Part of that is human nature, but as someone who figured out the trick and moved on down to lesser crowded cars, I nevertheless found it hard to maneuver between the people, columns, platform gap and train. Sure, some columns will have to remain, but I've read that mostly that would be limited to the elevators, and much smaller supports.

As to through running, I too have recognized that the imbalanced traffic would prevent most through movements. However, I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't at least help. The way I see it, is that any contra-flow traffic gets in the way of peak-flow traffic when having to reverse out of the station. LIRR, NJT and later Metro North will all run some amount of contra-flow traffic. So since NJT and LIRR serve different sides of the station, sending an NJT train out toward Long Island, and sending a train from the Island to New Jersey would maintain the flow while reducing crossover and "reverse" moves in and around the station itself. Equipment-wise, this gets real sticky. I won't even pretend that MTA would be willing to build a 25Hz-capable M8 or future EMU and NJT wouldn't put third-rail equipment on their EMUs so that's out. That leaves the dual-mode fleet. However, the DE30s are third rail, which I believe ends somewhere in the North River Tunnels, which means the rail would have to be extended for a mile or so to let them change over. So the only existing option remaining is the ALP45s. There's still the problem of "is there enough wire east of the East River Tunnels to allow the changeover" however, but I vaguely remember reading there is. So, LIRR and NJT would have to cooperate to run NJT equipment as LIRR trains before changing to NJT trains at Penn Station while departing from the opposite concourse, which probably isn't good either.

I mentioned Metro North as they would certainly like to access Penn Station via the Empire Connection. Perhaps something similar could be done with their dual-modes being fitted with M8-style third rail shoes. However, there's the same issue with departing from the NJT concourse, unless you really want their trains to move over the entire plant across a redesigned A(?) interlocking to the LIRR side from the Empire Tunnel. However, if you toss Metro North into the mix, you might end up with an imbalance in reverse-peak capacity. If MNRR could access Penn via the Hellgate line, that might could work with the Hudson line trains, but then you'd go from two terminating railroads, to essentially two through railroads, and if anything, that would require even more capacity.

But these preceeding two paragraphs are entirely moot however if there's no capacity freed up. Because that's the whole point of this rigamarole aside from Metro North accessing Penn Station, but even MNRR and LIRR running through to each other may not free up that much capacity; as pointed out above by Jis, LIRR already runs through to the yard. Any way you slice it, it's an almighty mess!
 
I thought I read that columns were already there, but that with the new MSG built on top, they were absolutely necessarily to keep that building up. I found some other message board discussion where someone linked to a 1944 diagram of the Penn Station track layout. It was heavily lined with columns and was about as hard to get around those columns as it is today.

nyp.gif
 
Think its hard manuever around those columns, elevators, and passengers on foot?

Try operating one of those big, heavy, ancient, Yale electric baggage trucks they used to have, on those narrow, crowded platforms some time.... ;) :p
 
I would not consider the idea of building a better station at NYP a vanity project. My concern is that a major rebuild project with a new station over the tracks would be extremely disruptive for a multi-year interval and the new station project costs could easily spiral out of control, consuming funds better spent on NEC modernization and capacity expansion.

What Amtrak, NJT, and the NEC planners need to accomplish is to get all the players to agree that the core part of the Gateway project much be completed first - two new Hudson tunnels, two new Portal bridges, 4 tracks from Newark to NYP - before any major NYP revamp or rebuild is undertaken. Oh, key projects such as the B&P tunnel replacement should also be fully funded and under construction as well, as a fancy new Penn Station is not going to be as worthwhile if WAS to NYP traffic shuts down because the B&P tunnel fell in.
 
The platforms need to be wider and there needs to be multiple entrances and exits to the platforms. Only after they fix this issue, can they address the concourse. However, I think there are improvements that they can do today to fix the problem.
 
But all platforms already have multiple entry and exit points. Surely you mean more entry and exit points than there are today? All platforms have at least 4, mostly 6 and some upto 10 exit points. When the West End Concourse is completed all except the southmost three would have one or two more access points from it.

They cannot widen the platforms easily or without extremely large expense. The guy who manages capital projects on NEC tells me that it is not something that can just be done. If funded it will be a many year project, and at present there are no plans to do so.
 
What Amtrak, NJT, and the NEC planners need to accomplish is to get all the players to agree that the core part of the Gateway project much be completed first - two new Hudson tunnels, two new Portal bridges, 4 tracks from Newark to NYP - before any major NYP revamp or rebuild is undertaken. Oh, key projects such as the B&P tunnel replacement should also be fully funded and under construction as well, as a fancy new Penn Station is not going to be as worthwhile if WAS to NYP traffic shuts down because the B&P tunnel fell in.
While I agree that B&P Tunnel should be fully funded, I don;t think the mere absence of trains from south of Baltimore will render all improvements to Penn Station useless. Aftersll as a proportion of total traffic handled by Penn Station traffic from south of Baltimore is but a relatively small proportion.
 
But all platforms already have multiple entry and exit points. Surely you mean more entry and exit points than there are today? All platforms have at least 4, mostly 6 and some upto 10 exit points. When the West End Concourse is completed all except the southmost three would have one or two more access points from it.
They cannot widen the platforms easily or without extremely large expense. The guy who manages capital projects on NEC tells me that it is not something that can just be done. If funded it will be a many year project, and at present there are no plans to do so.

Who is the guy who manages capital projects on the NEC? Please ask him the for the most up-to-date information on the Gateway Project--and post it to this response!
 
Don't worry. You and everyone else (including me) will learn about things when people managing the Project are comfortable talking about it. Follow what is happening in the NECFuture web site for now. That is your best bet. There will be relatively little published about Gateway for the time being except for occasional presentations at NARP meeting and Rail Industry Conferences, the latter of which unfortunately are usually closed and cost a lot of money to register for and attend, but also have the most detailed information. Do not expect to learn much beyond that since anyone in there who cares for his job will not share information about such a politically charged matter freely.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If you are familiar enough with NYP, you know the multiple entrances and exits. If you are a newbie, there appears only one entrance when Amtrak is called.

Everyone stands in the concourse and waits and it seams like nobody is even in the waiting room. In my opinion the entire Amtrak waiting room and entrances needs to be modified. One idea is to check your ticket before going into the waiting room and then have multiple entrances from the waiting room to the platforms. No need to check tickets when entering the platform.
 
Ah, the Penn Station Grand Central connection with run through rises again. Another favorite boondoggle of starry eyed planners and dreamers who have never bothered to check their dreams against realities. Unfortunately they have apparently never bothered to run a single simulation, which would very quickly show that the traffic imbalance in rush hours between inbound and outbound will cause one to either run lots of empty trains long distances or gum up the works in the tunnels under Manhattan big time.
Wrong. I take it YOU have never bothered to run a properly calibrated simulation. The traffic is far more balanced than you think it is. Have you actually checked NJT schedules?

NJT runs far less traffic than LIRR or Metro-North. The entire NJT peak schedule could be operated as extensions of existing Metro-North and LIRR reverse-peak runs, and obviously the NJT reverse-peak schedule could be operated as extensions of LIRR and Metro-North peak runs.

The lightness of the NJT schedule is the critical point here. If the NJT schedule were anywhere close to the density of the LIRR and Metro-North schedules, there would be a problem. It isn't and there isn't.

Nor have they accounted for the total cost of project to actually be able to do what they suggest. It requires way way more than just drilling two tunnels connecting GCT to Penn.
Well, the last professional study of Alternative G said it was the cheapest option both operationally and in capital terms. You saying they're wrong?
I actually once upon a time built a simple simulation model and was very surprised to discover the unworkability of the traffic flow with just two tunnels connecting GCT and Penn, and no further expansion of track capacity out of GCT to the north. But of course we know that we can wish away Physics and Math when we are out dreaming.
Your simulation was obviously not properly calibrated. Perhaps it failed to include the Hudson tunnels or something equally dumb?
As for run throughs, all that you can practically do is run through a subset of arriving trains during rush hours, not all of them, and that should be done ASAP.
That's all that can ever be practically done, anyway.... even in Berlin's Hauptbahnhof. You can only run through a subset of rush-hour trains, ever. You can run through everything off-peak, of course.
Beyond that there is not enough track capacity to run them to anywhere in the counter flow direction in LI, or in NJ.
Well, you need the second pair of Hudson Tunnels, too, obviously. *As noted in the study* which included Alternative G.
But it will require track layout changes the cost of which will start paralleling the cost of building a station extension.
The study which actually studied it said it would be cheaper *and* would reduce operational costs. You saying they were wrong?
"Alternative G" was rejected based solely on the *political* risk of tunnelling under expensive land. You've read the study, surely!
 
I thought I read that columns were already there, but that with the new MSG built on top, they were absolutely necessarily to keep that building up. I found some other message board discussion where someone linked to a 1944 diagram of the Penn Station track layout. It was heavily lined with columns and was about as hard to get around those columns as it is today.
nyp.gif
The original Penn Station had unduly narrow platforms, which was OK for the mostly intercity traffic of the day. (I do not think much of the original Penn Station layout, with its separate "entrance" and "exit" concourses, with stairs everywhere and narrow platforms. I think the design sucked.) The individual columns were widened when MSG was built, making the problem worse. (The original columns were supposed to be very "slender", and now they're big concrete hulks.)

And yes, it would be ferociously expensive to widen the platforms. IMO, it would be worth it, but it would be ferociously expensive. It could be done without demolishing Farley -- the columns are much less obtrusive at that end -- but it would definitely require removing the entire block from 8th to 7th.

I'll be puckish here and suggest that no, it's not worth it, because New York is going to be destroyed by flooding anyway, and nobody in the city is going to bother to do a damned thing to prevent it. Just redirect Amtrak through Upstate NY to bypass this dead city. :p
 
Ah, the Penn Station Grand Central connection with run through rises again. Another favorite boondoggle of starry eyed planners and dreamers who have never bothered to check their dreams against realities. Unfortunately they have apparently never bothered to run a single simulation, which would very quickly show that the traffic imbalance in rush hours between inbound and outbound will cause one to either run lots of empty trains long distances or gum up the works in the tunnels under Manhattan big time.
Wrong. I take it YOU have never bothered to run a properly calibrated simulation. The traffic is far more balanced than you think it is. Have you actually checked NJT schedules?
I see that Jishnu has chosen to bite his tongue Nathanael with regard to your post; so I'm going to speak briefly in his behalf. Jishnu is NJARP's liaison to NJT. The man lives & breathes NJT schedules. If he ran a simulation, I can assure you that he considered every aspect, every train, every switch in his simulation.

I also know for a fact that Jishnu has attended almost every meeting there has ever been on all the various plans & options for increased service into NYP, connecting tunnels to GCT, and even the now dead NJT plan for new tunnels to 34th Street. He's spoken personally with big whigs at these events and has I'm sure gotten some insider info that he's not at liberty to discuss publicly.

Since you mentioned flooding in NYC, let me put it this way; if NYC was about to flood and I needed to take just 1 NJT train out of 10 to get out of the city to save my life and I was given only 1 phone call, I'd be calling Jishnu to see which NJT train I should get on. Yes, that's a bit of a contrived set of circumstances. But the point is, if I really need to know something about NJT, Jishnu is the guy I'm calling!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ah, the Penn Station Grand Central connection with run through rises again. Another favorite boondoggle of starry eyed planners and dreamers who have never bothered to check their dreams against realities. Unfortunately they have apparently never bothered to run a single simulation, which would very quickly show that the traffic imbalance in rush hours between inbound and outbound will cause one to either run lots of empty trains long distances or gum up the works in the tunnels under Manhattan big time.
Wrong. I take it YOU have never bothered to run a properly calibrated simulation. The traffic is far more balanced than you think it is. Have you actually checked NJT schedules?
I see that Jishnu has chosen to bite his tongue Nathanael with regard to your post; so I'm going to speak briefly in his behalf. Jishnu is NJARP's liaison to NJT. The man lives & breathes NJT schedules. If he ran a simulation, I can assure you that he considered every aspect, every train, every switch in his simulation.

I also know for a fact that Jishnu has attended almost every meeting there has ever been on all the various plans & options for increased service into NYP, connecting tunnels to GCT, and even the now dead NJT plan for new tunnels to 34th Street. He's spoken personally with big whigs at these events and has I'm sure gotten some insider info that he's not at liberty to discuss publicly.

Since you mentioned flooding in NYC, let me put it this way; if NYC was about to flood and I needed to take just 1 NJT train out of 10 to get out of the city to save my life and I was given only 1 phone call, I'd be calling Jishnu to see which NJT train I should get on. Yes, that's a bit of a contrived set of circumstances. But the point is, if I really need to know something about NJT, Jishnu is the guy I'm calling!
ME TOO!!!

Aloha
 
There has been discussion about a future 6, 7 or 8 track station to the south of the current Penn Station, known as Penn South. My question is, though, if a SIX track option gets chosen for Penn South--or the deep-level option-- would this only enable 18 trains per hour, at 3 trains per hour per track, instead of 24?
 
I thought I read that columns were already there, but that with the new MSG built on top, they were absolutely necessarily to keep that building up. I found some other message board discussion where someone linked to a 1944 diagram of the Penn Station track layout. It was heavily lined with columns and was about as hard to get around those columns as it is today.
nyp.gif
The original Penn Station had unduly narrow platforms, which was OK for the mostly intercity traffic of the day. (I do not think much of the original Penn Station layout, with its separate "entrance" and "exit" concourses, with stairs everywhere and narrow platforms. I think the design sucked.) The individual columns were widened when MSG was built, making the problem worse. (The original columns were supposed to be very "slender", and now they're big concrete hulks.)

And yes, it would be ferociously expensive to widen the platforms. IMO, it would be worth it, but it would be ferociously expensive. It could be done without demolishing Farley -- the columns are much less obtrusive at that end -- but it would definitely require removing the entire block from 8th to 7th.

I'll be puckish here and suggest that no, it's not worth it, because New York is going to be destroyed by flooding anyway, and nobody in the city is going to bother to do a damned thing to prevent it. Just redirect Amtrak through Upstate NY to bypass this dead city. :p
An elaborate system of dams and locks in Long Island Sound and the Narrows will take care of that! Just like they do in the Netherlands and Venice! We've already geoengineered the atmosphere, time to get cracking on everything else!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top