A study commissioned by NJ Transit, Amtrak, and the MTA calls for expanding Penn Station New York. October 3, 2024.
© Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
(New York, NY) – It’s no secret that New York Penn Station is in need of an upgrade. Whether it’s the faulty train tracks and aging signal systems down in the building’s basement, or the tattered facilities and facades, the Midtown transit hub is not looking so hot these days. And it’s daily operations are more on the end of “moribund” than anything that could ever even hope to amount to “mediocre.”
So it comes as no surprise that a new study calls for an upgrade — in the form of an expansion. A study from New Jersey Transit, the MTA, and Amtrak calls for a doubling of train capacity at Penn Station in Midtown. It would require the facility to be enlarged. A study released this week says the number of rush hour trains could be doubled — from 24 to 48 — but only by building new tracks.
One idea was to build additional tracks underneath the existing ones, going even further down into the Manhattan bedrock, but that was deemed implausible. Instead, Penn Station would need to expand beyond its current boundaries — perhaps by extending two blocks south — into the 30th and 31st Street blocks. Bounded by 7th and 8th Avenues, that would allows for the building of more tracks.
The expansion idea has been floated by officials in the past. One of the most recent projects is the building of the Monahan Train Hall, just across the street from Penn Station to the West — in the basement of the Farley Post Office.
