Quick Note: Andy Byford and Through-Running
At an event run by ReThinkNYC, Andy Byford spoke for five minutes in support of through-running at Penn Station. They put out the press release, so I feel it’s fine to reprint it in full here with some comments.
The timing works well for what I’m involved in. The Transportation and Land Use program at Marron is about to release a playable 3D model of a reimagined Penn Station designed around through-running and around maximally efficient passenger egress, with above-ground structures like Madison Square Garden removed; I was hoping for the model to come out in June in time for the debate about whether to extend the Garden’s operating permit, but that debate seems to be going the right way regardless, and the Garden itself is open to moving, for a price. Then, the Effective Transit Alliance is about to release a long report explaining the issue of through-running, why it’s good for New York, and how to implement it.
The bulk of what we’re about to do on this side of the TLU program for the next year is figure out timetable coordination for regional and intercity rail, so showing how everything would fit together should take some time, but the question of feasibility has already been answered; the work is about how to optimize questions like “where do high-speed bypasses go?” or “which curves is it worthwhile to fix?” or “which junctions should be grade-separated?”.
First of all I am honored to be in a conversation with people that I regard as absolutely luminaries in the transit space, people like Prof. [Robert] Paaswell, people like Dr. [Vukan] Vuchic. These are luminaries to me in the field of, not only transport planning, but in the particular area we’re talking about today, namely through-running.
I was very encouraged to hear Assemblymember [Tony] Simone talk about the benefit of avoiding demolishing a beautiful part of New York City, which although I live in D.C. now, is a city that is so dear to my heart. I feel I’m an adopted New Yorker, I love that place and it would break my heart to see beautiful buildings torn down on Eighth and Seventh Aves. when they don’t need to be.
I should say at the get-go, that I’m not speaking on behalf of Amtrak. I’m speaking as a railway professional. I’ve worked in transit now for 34 years. But I just feel this is a golden opportunity — and the assembly member mentioned that — and one of the other speakers also mentioned the benefits of through-running and made reference to what happened in London. London learned that lesson. There are two effectively two cross London railroads.
There’s the Elizabeth Line, which I had the pleasure of opening with Her Majesty the Queen back in 2022, and that’s has been transformative in that where people used to have to jump on the Central Line, had to get off at Paddington and then go down to the Central Line and or down to Lancaster Gate and go through Central London to go to East London to Liverpool St. and then go out the other side, now they don’t have to.
The Central Line has been immediately relieved of pressure and you’ve got a state of the art, very high speed actually, through-service state of the art railway, under the wires. Beautiful stations, air conditioned, which at a stroke has been a game changer for London, connecting not only the key parts of Central London, but also Heathrow Airport, Paddington, Liverpool St., Canary Wharf and the City of London. It is a game changer. People in Frankfurt, people in Amsterdam, people in Paris and dare I say, New York, are probably gnashing their teeth because that was a game changer for London.
Well, I live in the States now, I’m going to be an American hopefully in a few years time and I want to do my bit for the States. So it seems to me that this is a golden opportunity for the U.S. and for New York City to have something similar to the Elizabeth Line, to have something that has that economic regenerative impact in New York.
And the other corridor of course, was Thameslink, that preceded Crossrail, but that’s the north/south corridor. There again, once upon a time you used to rock up in South London and have to get on the Tube you’ll be getting on the Vic Line or you’re getting on the Northern and have to go up to Euston or Kings Cross to go north.
Now, you don’t have to do that and what London has seen is the benefit of that cross-London traffic and that through-running because you’ve got not only the economic benefits of the City but the knock-on effect of north, south, east and west of businesses popping up, of housing being developed and of relief to the existing transport lines.
So I don’t know how this is going to pan out, but what I would say, Sam [Turvey]: is good for you for at least calling the question. This is a golden opportunity. It’s not just about building something that’s more aesthetically pleasing — important as though that is, Penn Station is kind of an embarrassment — but you can’t fix it by just putting in a few light boxes, by just heightening the ceilings, by just widening a few corridors.
If we’re going to do all of that, why not take the opportunity to fix the damn thing once and for all, which is, I’m going to say: get rid of the pillars, which means move MSG, but at the very least, do something with the track configuration to enable through-running.
So that’s it, that’s my pitch. I do stress that’s my personal opinion. I’m not speaking on behalf of Amtrak. I don’t know all the facts. If it was the case that someone asked me to have a look at this, I’ll be honored to do that, but I’m just speaking as a private person who cares about New York City, who cares about the States and who’s seen what good looks like along with people far smarter than me like Prof. Paaswell and Dr. Vuchic. So thank you so much.
Pedestrian Observations 
Through running would be amazing, though I can’t help but wonder why the Hell Gate/Metro North line isn’t included? Given that it already is funded, it seems really odd to leave it out here. Are there substantial numbers of Hudson/Connecticut commuters who would transfer at Port Morris? I’m also confused as to the reasoning behind the Q/LGA alignment. If you’re going to include the LGA train, why not just bring the Q to LGA instead of having an air train? I’d rather see the alignment they have for the Q in the Bronx hook up to a cross Bronx subway or El.
It’s included in all proposals I’m aware of – it’s the Penn-Grand Central connection that is sometimes absent (as from ReThink and the RPA Fourth Plan).
Ah, okay. They need to update their website then. Do you know of a place to find their updated recommendations?
As for Penn-Grand Central, how would that interact with the ReThink plan? It seems awkward either way — either you leave GC as a terminal or you have less service to Port Morris and Sunnyside than ReThink are planning for, though the MN-NJT links should probably be superior?
Finally, I know ReThink is trying to be cost effective and all but it does seem like there are missed opportunities with Atlantic terminal, and I’d like to see downtown bypasses at 125th St and the GWB.
Penn-Grand Central doesn’t interfere with anything else. The way Gateway is set up makes it impossible to pair it with any existing tunnel, so something has to be built anew, and it might as well be a connection to Grand Central rather than two more tracks to Long Island.
On page 72 of ReThink’s booklet, they propose a setup for Gateway that makes it part of their East bound tracks running to Sunnyside, without adding tracks to Long Island I think. Is that leaving capacity on the table vs routing those to GC?
Some of their technical details are iffy. For example, they think the train paths through Penn Station can be done, from north to south, westbound-westbound-eastbound-eastbound, like the LIRR Main Line where it has four tracks; in fact, the existing tunnels go westbound-eastbound-westbound-eastbound, with flying junctions to the Main Line.
There are a few hundred thousand jobs and residences/hotel rooms within walking distance of Grand Central and millions of people on Long Island not-Brooklyn.
I’d be interested in seeing a writeup of exactly what the options are and what the barriers to each option are. I know you’ve written a couple posts on it, but I don’t recall seeing anything on the track layout at Penn Station — not a long time follower, though.
@adirondacker: yes, I think connecting to GC makes a lot of sense too, but the priority of ReThink seems to be connecting suburbs to suburbs in order to establish new/grow currently smaller CBDs. In that case it kinda makes sense to disregard the possibility of Penn-GC. Also, with 3 lines down from the Bronx (Hell Gate, Harlem to GC, and ReThink’s Port Morris) the scheduling is going to be very interesting to figure out if there are 3 ways to get to Penn from the Bronx. The good thing is that at least Hell Gate is opposite side of Penn from GC and Port Morris so I think it could be made to work.
Connecting Grand Central to Penn Station makes sense to people who have no concept of the scale.
Did the press release mention Houston or Euston? Should be the latter.
Byford said Euston, ReThink accidentally spelled it Houston, I fixed it in the post.
It’s pretty clear Byford is a pretty smart political operator so if he’s comparing to London and the UK I would say that fixing some of the problems with public transport in the UK and Canada is probably a good way to make a persuasive argument to America that might be listened to.
Just where would “through-running” trains operate? With what equipment?
Penn Sta was designed to be through-running. PRR trains ran through to the Sunnyside Yards to reverse direction. LIRR trains ran through to the Westside Yards to reverse direction. Some still do.
Relaying to these yards means an additional trainset, crew, etc. would be necessary to maintain the same schedule than simply reversing direction at the platform.
This old post gives a possible implementation. By through running, that means taking say a NJT train through to stations on the far side of Manhattan as a passenger.
Through running is much more than that – it’s taking that NJT train and continuing it to say, Port Jefferson, or taking a MN New Haven Line train to Penn and continuing it down the Jersey Coast to Bay Head. Through running connects opposite sides of the metro area with trains that run through the center.
What type of MN equipment would run New Haven through Penn Sta to Bay Head? What type of NJT equipment would run through Penn Sta to Port Jefferson?
After you figure that out, what’s the passenger demand for such through service?
What do you expect will happen to the on time performance?
NJtransit trains ran from New Haven to Trenton, on Sunday afternoons, when there was a game at Giant’s Stadium. Something hauled by an ALP-45 could go all the way to Bay Head.
Why you would want to do that is a different question.
Jamaica poops it’s pants again and the trains to New Jersey are all out in Nassau County not only are the LIRR passengers delayed so are the NJTransit passengers. Twice as many people get twice as many delays!!! Sounds great.
There is some passenger demand for through service, but importantly through running also means that operations at the midtown stations can be much improved. CBD termini are just not very efficient in both space and time.
LIRR already has an enormous yard just west of the station, that people are spending 10 billion, with a b like in boy, per block, to build skyscrapers over.
Well, through-running usually doesn’t go right to the end of the line on the other side (eg look at the Elizabeth Line, there are no trains that run the full length of the line from Reading to Shenfield. So you probably wouldn’t be seeing Metro-North trains going as far as Bay Head.
Running more off- and reverse-peak service doesn’t require much additional crew or equipment – equipment needs come from the peak in the peak direction, and scheduling crews with split shifts is nontrivial.
If you’re asking about which trainsets can run on various voltages, then the answer is that multi-voltage EMUs are a solved problem and are both cheap and fast to procure compared to Gateway.
@Alon Levy
If you’re asking about which trainsets can run on various voltages, then the answer is that multi-voltage EMUs are a solved problem and are both cheap and fast to procure compared to Gateway.
Yes I am.
The current NJT EMU fleet cannot operate on the LIRR. The current LIRR fleet cannot operate past Penn Sta. The equipment is quite new – less than 20 years old. Are they to be scrapped to sustain the “through-running” mantra?
New equipment cost should be added to the “through-running” price tag.
The M9 contract was awarded in Sept 2013. They did not enter service until Sept 2019. The contract cost over $2.5 M per car. I would not characterize the delivery time and cost as cheap and fast.
$2.5 million per 25 meter long car is a completely standard cost; my worry is that future procurements in the US can’t maintain this, because they are diverging too much from what the global market makes and the MTA sticks to old designs that the world has moved on from.
The cost of full fleet replacement is on the order of single-digit billions, which is a lot less than the HTP. And six years of lead time is also less than how long it’s taking to build HTP. For a tunnel that’s scheduled to open around 2035, it’s fine to buy new trains rather than relying on what has been available since the 2000s.
Japan scraps their trains after 15 years. I’m not sure if it is a good idea overall, but 15 years is a long time for a train. Those who keep their trains for 40 years (most of the rest of the world) do a major overhaul after 20, which isn’t cheap. Thus the NJT fleet should be coming up for a major expense in overhauling it. Considering advances in power electronics over the last 20 years I suspect replacing all the current electronics with something modern is something they should be doing anyway and that gives them a lot more voltage capability for “free”. The new stuff might take up enough less space as to give them one more seat on each train. The multi-voltage just comes for “free”.
“Japan scraps their trains after 15 years.”
Er, that definitely isn’t that common in Japan. There are plenty of 15-year-old+ trains operating in Japan, Japanese railways cascade old stock just as other countries do.
I will always think back to how much of a missed opportunity the late 2000s had to move MSG. The state took over the property right across the street at the same time that MSG needed an expensive renovation. Building a new MSG across 8th Ave and then being able to renovate Penn Station in whatever manner is needed should have been a no brainer decision.
Instead MSG was renovated in its current location for the about the same cost it took to build the Barclays Center while $1.6 billion was spent on building Moynihan despite its location not allowing it to access the platforms for every track.
figure out timetable coordination for regional and intercity rail,
You can’t there are too many trains.
Why is quantity a problem? Just means the planners have to be good.
There are multiple suburban branches sharing the tracks. The don’t all arrive at the station at the same time.
The [suburban] branches could just run a train every 10-15 minutes all day – a bit like a subway service. Probably then people wouldn’t be too bothered about changing trains.
And to be honest I don’t think it should be particularly expensive – running better service on the branches should facilitate more mainline journeys – and therefore more revenue.
The whole point of purportedly coordinating things is to change trains.
You don’t comprehend the scale. The LIRR and NJTransit have 9 branches. Instead of having ten sets of tunnels, so that all the trains arrive at the same time, they very very cleverly run a train from each branch, seriallly, ON THE SAME TRACK!!! Which means they arrive at different times.
SMA+Partner has that down: see the “Netgraphs” section to see that many timetabled, coordinated trains every hour can do timetabled, coordinated things.
above-ground structures like Madison Square Garden removed….
….I’m going to say: get rid of the pillars, which means move MSG
The forest of pillars was there before the Garden was built. They are holding up the concourses. It’s obvious if you are…. on one of the concourses… You need moderately accurate drawings of what is where. You need moderately accurate drawings of the buildings on the east side of Seventh Ave and the west side of Eighth Ave because the station’s platforms extend that far. So it’s not just Madison Square Garden it’s the Post Office/Moynihan and a few skyscrapers.
Governor Hochul has a vision of a single level Penn Station. I have no idea what that means because at a bare minimum it’s three. I lean towards making it six.
I made the blueprint on a background with a map of all the columns. Between 7th and 8th the columns can go pretty easily if you remove the above-ground structures; between 8th and 9th I made sure to respect column placement.
No one asked you what you were doing with your theodolite?
Most of the stuff isn’t above ground it’s at the subway level or below that.
playable 3D model of a reimagined Penn Station designed around through-running and around maximally efficient passenger egress, with above-ground structures like Madison Square Garden removed
Having to go up to street level, to get to the subway, after passing through the subway level, sucks. There is weather and having to go out in it to get on the subway sucks.
You can walk on the platforms in the model; they’re wide enough.
To where? I get off a train at the existing Track 1 and walk towards one of the Avenues I’m at 31st Street. How do I get from the platform to the subway level?
Why do you think MSG is open to moving? I didn’t interpret their comments about the permit renewal to be anything but fighting tooth and nail, and maybe they’d negotiate on one of the theaters.
They mentioned that they’re willing to be paid for the Vishaan Chakrabarti plan to move them toward Macy’s.
All the reporting I’ve read seems to show they are willing to negotiate on plans that improve the existing Penn Station and retain the arena in place; and that is (smartly) the focus of the city in negotiating on the operating permit, rather than trying for force MSG to move (for which the operating permit has always been the wrong tool, destined to fail).
The bottom line remains that MSG is privately owned property; they will not leave voluntarily. The public also cannot just assume the arena away.
The city is not required to continue the permit. Of course it can choose to do so; the federal government can also choose to write off the city as unwilling to govern itself and therefore undeserving of federal funds for infrastructure.
Again, the bottom line remains: MSG is privately owned. The property is incredibly valuable.
If you want to move them off that property, you are going to have to pay to do it. Either via eminent domain, or a negotiated purchase. If the City wants to deny the permit on arbitrary grounds, they will be sued and they will lose.
Not to mention the political blowback that will happen when the city government is responsible for the Knicks not having a place to play.
Dolan has notably not threatened to sue; when I ask metro journalists about it, they say Dolan’s threat is to move to the Meadowlands, not to sue. And the political blowback is fictional – there is no serious opposition in New York.
I’m still curious what reporting references them being open to moving.
I have seen reporting that they are open to the alternative Penn Station plan that involves them selling the theater; but that is decidedly NOT moving the actual arena.
For the permit, the city basically is required (meaning they don’t realistically have a rationale to deny the permit) to continue the permit in some fashion, or they’re going to have to pay. You can’t use a zoning permit like this to deny them the use of their property – particularly when the arena has been there, operating, since 1968.
Does ReThink include paying MSG to move in their cost estimate of $6-7b for a rebuilt Penn? If not, then that will be quite a bit more expensive (even if certainly better for the network) than Penn Station South and that’s something that Hochul will point to in any serious discussion of rebuilt Penn.
Off with their heads when they don’t do what you want.
17 seconds (I timed it) with Google turned up this.
Less time than you’ve invested asking for reporting references.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/25/madison-square-garden-willing-to-relocate-across-street-official/
Yes, it’s the NY Post. No I know nothing about the local (limitlessly corrupt) politics. Yes, I’m sure it was all mealy-mouthed and meant nothing and I’m sure the quicksands have shifted since then, but there you are, a “reporting reference”.
Everything I know about NY MTA says “nuke the site from orbit”, and by that I mean both NY Penn and NY MTA. What a worthless hideous embarrassing disgusting hellhole.
Thanks for the link, Richard. So, they’re open to the idea, but would need someone else to assemble the site and pay for all the costs.
Which is exactly what you’d expect for an arena that owns a very valuable parcel of land in the middle of NYC.
But, of course, none of this is particularly relevant to the issue of the operating permit, which concerns the current arena.
“Does ReThink include paying MSG to move in their cost estimate of $6-7b for a rebuilt Penn?”
It sure seems like not. Their letter claiming a cheaper project is “exclusive of the headhouse.”
Madison Square Garden doesn’t own any land. I’m not a real estate lawyer and don’t want to speculate on how Manhattan air rights, leasing etc. work.
Fair enough. By land I mean property. MSG does own real property, and property that might as well be land; they basically own everything from the street level up. They also own the air rights; their lawyers have noted if the city were to deny their operating permit, they could raze MSG and build air rights skyscrapers on the site by right. Just can’t build a basement.
There is no lease; they own it outright.
This is the main bone of contention in the operating permit battle; the main goal for the planning commission is to get MSG to agree to land swaps (again, “land” being synonymous with property here) for key assets that MSG currently owns and the renovated station would want, namely the taxi drive and other entrances at the corners. Which is a reasonable thing to ask for with a permit on a site with multiple interests that need coordinating. But the advocates for denying the permit ten years ago and again now as a way to “make” MSG move are sorely mistaken about the actual issues involved.
could raze MSG and build air rights skyscrapers on the site by right.
Once they get Amtrak to allow them to bring all the additional services in. It’s 2023 their prospective tenants are going to expect heat, running water – hot and cold – , sewers to carry it away. Very likely electricity and air conditioning. The telecom wouldn’t need wrist thick copper cables anymore but telecom.
Air rights skyscrapers would cost too much anyway. Private property can be seized by eminent domain, and is all the time in the US; Dolan isn’t especially legally strong here, and judging by what people tell me (namely, that nobody likes him), he’s not actually politically strong, he’s just facing a state and city government both run by dregs.
It would cost too much in Cleveland. Madison Square Garden is sitting on top of the country’s busiest railroad station and two busy subway stations. A block away from another very busy subway station. Costing a lot of money hasn’t stopped people two blocks away. In nice round numbers, 10 billion a block.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Yards,_Manhattan
Costing a lot of money did stop developers until Bloomberg offered property tax breaks. If it’s desirable to have skyscrapers at Penn Station, let Vornado build on firma around the station; don’t build above the tracks at double the construction cost of adjacent blocks.
(Besides which, Vornado is struggling to even find financing for the new skyscrapers nowadays.)
Tax breaks don’t last forever and the upscale mall generates lot more sales tax than air above a railroad yard does.
When Vornado wanted to tear down the Hotel Pennsylvania umpteen different historical preservationists crawled out from behind the columns in Cafe Rouge and came up umpteen reasons to preserve it. My favorite was that it would ruin the viewshed to the Empire State Building. According to Wikipedia the demolition was to be completed this month. Vornado is finding money someplace.
….over the eastern end of tracks 10-ish to 21…
Yes, private property can be seized via eminent domain. No one is suggesting otherwise.
But the point is there’s no way to get rid of MSG without paying for the property they own.
Either you pay billions via eminent domain, or you pay billions to entice them to move voluntarily. But you will pay, and pay a lot.
The article I was reading, I think on the New York Times, was mentioning $2 billion, which compares with a $7 billion budget for Penn Reconstruction.
It strikes me that a lot of the value in through-running is in having multiple stops in the core which have services to both ends of the route. But Penn Station through-running wouldn’t provide this – everyone already has access to Penn Station, and there are no other stops between Secaucus and Woodside (neither of which is a major destination), so accessibility would not increase much.
I was wondering if this could possibly be fixed by adding infill stations. The obvious spots are Union City, east Midtown, Long Island City, and Queens Plaza.
Queens Plaza would be the easiest. The tracks are at surface level, you could just put platforms next to them. There’s a giant yard which through-running would make superfluous, it could be redeveloped with skyscrapers. Ideally the tracks would be moved a bit northward, so that the stop could be placed closer to the current Queens Plaza subway stop.
The most valuable infill station would be East Midtown. There is one track pair under 32nd St and one under 33rd St. There appears to be enough room for side platforms, and they could be easily built by digging downwards from the surface (it would be a little more complicated if you wanted to build under the Lexington subway for a better subway transfer). The biggest issue would probably dwell times, this stop would likely attract more regional passengers than Penn Station, while having no spare tracks/platforms on which to accommodate them.
The ReThink plan includes the Sunnyside infill station plan, so no need for Queens Plaza. I suspect a Penn to Grand Central connection is better to connect NJT riders to East Midtown not only because of the regional rail network effects but also because there are much better subway connections to the 5 and 7. You could add a stop on the 5 with a 33rd St infill station I suppose, but there are definitely some use cases where the 7 connection would be useful including to Queens Plaza. In that case, is there a need for a Queens Plaza infill station?
Yes, Queens Plaza is near-tied with Downtown Brooklyn for largest job center in the region outside Manhattan, and is growing faster.
@Alon Levy
Queens Plaza is near-tied with Downtown Brooklyn for largest job center in the region outside Manhattan, and is growing faster.
Not anymore. About a decade ago, the real estate industry discovered that more money was to be made in LIC by building residential properties than office space. Almost all the recent new buildings and rehabs have been new residential or residential conversions not commercial.
It seems a bit silly to have a Queens Plaza and a Sunnyside station less than 10 minutes walk from each other on an express alignment.
Then you do the one with an interchange with the subway.
Or you have the back of the station as an interchange with the subway at Queens Plaza and the front pointing towards Sunnydale.
Just Queens Plaza seems like a good option, yeah. I bet Sunnydale was picked by ReThink because they’re trying to reduce the costs and Sunnydale is more studied.
“The ReThink plan includes the Sunnyside infill station plan, so no need for Queens Plaza”
I had a look at the plan. What they call Sunnyside is almost exactly what I call Queens Plaza.
“I suspect a Penn to Grand Central connection is better to connect NJT riders to East Midtown not only because of the regional rail network effects but also because there are much better subway connections to the 5 and 7.”
Why not both? There are 4 track pairs to Penn Station – that’s a lot of trains that currently don’t have an east side stop. Yes LIRR passengers could transfer at Jamaica to a train to Grand Central Basement to get to the east side, but I think they’d much prefer to stay on their current train.
Also, if in the future Metro North is continued south to Lower Manhattan, it would cross the 4 LIRR tracks on its way. In terms of network connectivity it would be pretty bad not to have a transfer station there.
Huh, okay. In that case definitely no need for “Queens Plaza” as it will exist.
Why not both — because underground stations are expensive, basically.
Metro North to lower Manhattan would be super cool, but I don’t think that’s seriously on MTA’s radar (to be frank, I doubt even ReThink’s plan is even on the radar even though it should be). I’d love to see Metro North to Staten Island, even… Perhaps through Bayonne, Port Richmond, and Clove Rd. I do agree that in that case it makes more sense to have the east side infill station, though I wonder if in ReThink’s plan the thinking is for those commuters to take Metro North through Port Morris and transfer at Sunnyside to Grand Central Madison.
They would have to go to Woodside to get to Grand Central. The portals for the tunnels to Grand Central are east of the Sunnyside station.
@adirondacker — good point, in that case they are probably thinking of those commuters using the Shuttle which is a bad solution. That brings us back to either an East Midtown infill station or Penn to Grand Central, the latter of which is definitely better in terms of costs and network effects vs a new infill station. Ideally they would build both. I wonder where an infill station would best be sited — Park Ave to meet the congested 4/6, 2nd Ave to meet the future T (in a few decades…), or in between somewhere?
Send all the trains everywhere would cost too much and would be too much capacity. People who want to go to the East Side don’t have to stop on the West Side and people who want to go to the West Side don’t need to stop on the East Side. Send East Side Access trains to Newark and they can change trains there. Not building a station is cheaper than building one.
@adirondacker — East Side Access is too deep to go to Newark via the current tunnels AFAIK, you’d need another cross Hudson tunnel.
The trains wouldn’t be stopping anywhere else in Manhattan. Two tunnels from 38th and Park to the west side of Bergen Hill would be cheaper than splattering tunnels and stations all over Manhattan.
@adirondacker — ideally all trains would stop on both sides of midtown, it just makes sense in terms of the job concentrations as well as taking load off of the shuttle and 7th Ave line. Penn to Grand Central would allow a good number of through running regional trains to do so, and adding an infill station would allow almost all regional trains to do so except for those going to East Side Access. It could be interesting to add an infill station from East Side Access through Newark somewhere around 23rd St in Chelsea perhaps.
Maybe out in the hinterlands but there is a enough demand to be running a train express ever few minutes most of the day and two or three times an hour overnight. A lot cheaper than splattering tunnels and stations everywhere.
@adirondacker — nothing in the word express implies that you can only have one CBD stop. Paris RER has several stop pairs which are a similar distance to Penn – GC or ESA – Chelsea. The question, then, is whether the network wide beneficial effects of having a West and East Midtown stop on express/regional trains is worth the tunneling costs and extra couple minutes for commuters going to the opposite Midtown stop. Seems like a no brainer to me based on the current layout of the network and jobs locations.
You don’t comprehend the scale. The LIRR has the capacity to reliably run 20 trains an hour to Grand Central. They don’t because demand is down but the capacity. That’s every three minutes at Secaucus. Change trains instead of digging another deep cavern.
@adirondacker — I never said that all rides should be single seat. Certainly not all RER rides are, and that’s the gold standard. I do think that ESA is an opportunity to do something (in a couple decades perhaps) like ESA -> Chelsea -> Hoboken, and thereby clean up two business district terminals and support the continued development of Chelsea and Hoboken into major business districts in their own right. That would allow several through services to bypass Seacaucus, increasing capacity on the NJ side and flexibility for MN/LI.
Thameslink and the Elizabeth line both have 5 stations in the city centre – even if City Thameslink is basically redundant.
So I think if such a scheme is to be a big success in New York you would need more infill stations for sure.
Can’t wait for the new model to come out. Can I get a preview?