Penn Station Reborn
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Midtown is such a barren wasteland of concreteness. Walking through the garment district feels like you're a tiny mouse in a gigantic grey maze. If you happen to be on 7th or 8th looking north or south, then you get blinded by the lights of MSG or times square. The entire environment is aggressively imposing and claustrophobic, and going underground into Penn Station is 10x worse. I've ridden the LIRR and NJ transit a few times now, and if I were to go in today I would still get lost.
One of the coolest things about Tokyo's train lines is the layers of walkways stacked vertically above roads and between other paths (e.g. shibuya), so that you're often looking into the shared space that's the big public intersection in the middle. It feels more open and there's trees.
Cool cities make you feel like you're part of something bigger, and a big factor of that is shared open public space. Penn station makes you feel like a pinball bouncing between turnstiles.
The thing about Penn too is that it's extremely difficult to calculate your bearings. There's no significant landmarks to orient yourself by - every corridor looks the same. I use Penn regularly and I occasionally get lost if I happen to use a different entrance.
Yep. I take the train into Penn Station at least a couple times a year and I still invariably walk half a block in the wrong direction before figuring out what direction I'm facing.
There was a survey somewhere that said New Yorkers would rather their commute be 4 or 5 minutes longer if it meant it was less crowded or angry, or something like that. If you have to walk through some boring brutalist concrete everyday, your quality of life is going to be lower, whether you're running early or late.
Also not everyone in the city has the choice of living some place nicer in NYC. Midtown is where fresh college grads land because it's cheaper and more convenient than the rest of Manhattan, not to mention other immigrants or old people.
I like Brooklyn Heights more... though biking over a bridge-themed-tourist-attraction first thing in the morning is unenjoyable. The picture of the bike on the road does not mean "take your wedding picture here". But I digress.
There are far better uses for transit funding in the NYC area. Even within Penn Station, the low-hanging fruit would come by improving the track level (wider platforms/fewer tracks), rather than the concourses.
If this piques your interest, Levy's "Eliminate Penn Station" proposal[2] is worth a read, although he admits it's somewhat trollish.
[1] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/quic... [2] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/elim...
I was in the WTC transportation hub the other day. That thing cost $3.74 billion dollars, went almost a decade over the original projected completion time, and is not particularly great as a station. It's also in my opinion somewhat ugly, but I'll concede that opinions might differ on that.
Meanwhile the subway system, and greater regional transit system has some very critical needs -- things like communications-based train control, positive train control, track maintenance, station maintenance, tunnel repairs, and additional capacity for rapidly growing neighborhoods.
But those two things needn't be be mutually exclusive right? There are plenty of modern examples that offer both.
The Santiago Calatrava World Trade Center Station in downtown Manhattan, The Gare de Oriente in Lisbon, the Rotterdam Centraal in the Netherlands, Liège-Guillemins railway station in Belgium are all examples that combine both practicality and good aesthetics.
For those interested:
http://www.archdaily.com/783965/world-trade-center-transport...
http://inhabitat.com/santiago-calatravas-gorgeous-oriente-st...
http://www.dezeen.com/2009/12/02/liege-guillemins-station-by...
http://www.archdaily.com/588218/rotterdam-central-station-be...
NYC area construction costs are out of control relative to most of the developed world.
Or is it something more complicated like London crossrail which cost a similar amount.
The Second Avenue Subway is the most expensive metro ever constructed (on a per-mile basis), even compared to extremely dense, developed-world cities like Tokyo and Paris, both of whom have active subway construction going on for far cheaper.
There is a tremendous amount of waste and corruption in this process, and there's not a lot of political will to address it, since the governors of NY and NJ are both pretty deep in it themselves.
On the bright side, Christie's career has self-destructed over the course of this year, and Cuomo himself is under investigation for corruption. One can only hope that their successors would be a bit cleaner and more willing to tackle these issues.
https://nextcity.org/features/view/gateway-tunnel-project-hu...
> NYC area construction costs are out of control relative to most of the developed world.
Being in NYC construction and design, the problem currently is the availability of contractors and workers. The prices follow the law of supply and demand. And a huge amount of public sector work (billions of dollars) is hitting the region and more is projected in the future. Just yesterday I learned that recent construction bid prices for projects were coming in much, much higher than the engineer's estimate throughout the City. In contractor's words, times are good, so bid high.
I stand corrected - the latest official word from Amtrak is $23.9 billion for the entire Gateway project, of which $7.7 is specifically for the tunnel (not including track work that's necessary to link it with Secaucus and Penn Station).
That's just the current projected cost. East Side Access was projected at $4.3 billion, but will end up costing more than $10.8 billion.
[1] http://transitdocs.com/files/data/lirr/2012RidershipBook.pdf [2] http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/FactsAtaGlance.pdf
http://architektur.mapolismagazin.com/sites/default/files/be...
http://tfrisch.de/wp-content/gallery/u55-berlin/HBF%20Berlin...
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/berlin/berlin_haupt...
http://awesomeberlin.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/hauptbah...
Penn Station, the way it is now is just something you sort of shrug at, given the way Midtown is, in general.
Everything on 8th Avenue from 23rd Street to 59th Street is seedy and weird, but the creeps and transients really occupy a strip between 34th Street and 42nd Street.
I've always figured it was a legacy of The Old 42nd Street, from the 1970's. That place ancient New Yorkers still talk about, from a time before Giulliani's Disnified Times Square took root in the 90's, but honestly who knows.
Somtimes I wonder, though, if that part of town would be different now, if Madison Square Garden weren't there, and the original, grander Penn Station had still remained. Throughout the 20th century many other parts of Manhattan endured similar transformations, and even Grand Central went through a period of neglect, but to compare Grand Central to Penn Station now, is like night and day.
I figure there's something to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(1910%E2%...
Was destroyed to make way for this rat warren:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(New_York...
That's what I like about this plan. It takes the evil Madison Square Garden and saves it rather than just tearing it down as Penn Station was. The plan does something new rather than just trying to re-create the old Penn Station.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Foreve...
That's the retconned mythology. Based on what I've read, it's not clear how true it is.
It's probably also worth noting that Penn Station had been decaying for years and, with the bankruptcy of Penn Central because of a long-term decline in rail traffic, it's not clear what the mechanism to save Penn Station would have been at the time.
I don't disagree it's a pity--especially given how generally uninspired that whole area of Midtown is. But the NYC of fifty years ago was a very different place.
The railroads are an example of how excessive regulation can almost kill an industry - even the UP came mighty close to bankruptcy before deregulation.
I've read the first two - I also plan on reading: https://www.amazon.com/Merging-Lines-American-Railoads-1900-... and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875803164
You might also check out the 3 part history of the Union Pacific by Maury Klein.
It was my first time in a world-class city, and I had a phenomenal time - strolled down to K-Town and got some incredibly amazing Korean food, saw Times Square up close and in person, had a great time exchanging big thoughts with big thinkers, and generally had a wonderful time.
Now if they'd consider making Newark Airport and the PATH train into Penn Station not suck...
I guess parts of the facade and entrance on Seventh Avenue are somewhat distinctive. (The same architectural firm designed the hotel and Penn Station.)
I gather there's a renovation planned--which is sorely needed based on what I've seen. There was a long-running plan to just tear it down but supposedly it's going to be updated instead.
The reality is quite different.
I grew up in the tri-state area, and thought Penn Station was The City for most of my childhood. There's a ghost of this sensation that still haunts me, when I'm in that part of town.
Most of the time, trips to Manhattan were by train. A smaller handful of outings were field trips by school bus or by driving in, and arriving at a parking garage.
It wasn't until my late teens that I began to explore the rest of the city, and find new places without the lid of parental supervision or chaperones. It wasn't until my 20's that I realized there were parts of NYC that weren't littered with tourist trap schlock shops brimming with statue of liberty figurines and empire state building miniatures.
The really funny part is that my siblings still think that way, and in their mind, when I describe hanging out in the city, I think they imagine me hobnobbing with vagrants in front of the Arby's on 8th ave.
I see the comment about the traffic stats not necessarily justifying spending dollars on the experience of Penn Station, and I partly agree with that, but there's something you can't quantify about how important a first impression is (or maybe you can quantify it; I imagine you, pavement, and all the folks like you, who might have been turned off by that Penn Station experience flipping to Grand Central as the entryway and how many more dollars you might spend in the city over the course of your lives as a direct result of that improved first impression).
"One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat."
Midtown East is much less touristy and includes great restaurants, a lot of office buildings, and fairly residential parts (like Murray Hill). It also includes Penn Station's foil - Grand Central (Grand Central was actually saved because of the lessons learned from Penn Station).
Each of the Avenues have their own character, it so happens that 7th Ave and 8th Ave tends to be seedy, under-utilized, deserted, and altogether unpleasant.
Compare with, say, 5th Ave or 6th Ave, which even in its most tourist-trap-laden spots are actually reasonably pleasant places to be.
Or like you said, further east. I don't really consider Murray Hill/Kips Bay part of Midtown, but even Midtown East (42nd thru 59th) is rather nice and suffers from few/none of the problems that plague 7th and 8th Ave.
I think much of the problem comes down to the under-development of the Far West Side. The east side of Manhattan is extensively developed for commercial and residential use all the way to the edge of the water. The west side on the other hand continues to be a mix of light industry, auto shops, warehouses, and general usage that discourages public traffic.
The development of Hudson Yards (the form of which I disagree with) will hopefully alleviate some of this problem. As it is the area around Penn serves no useful purpose for anyone besides commuters passing through. The introduction of mass residential and commercial use should hopefully fix some of this.
My main beef with Hudson Yards is that it fails to follow the Manhattan grid, and favors massive complexes with idyllic parks and public spaces between buildings, rather than streets. This is the same fatally flawed planning that has created innumerable empty concrete plazas around the country - that whole area will be defined by the desertedness of its public spaces.
Ultimately the best public space are the streets were life and commerce happens, not isolated courtyards between skyscrapers.
I don't disagree with your general point. Boston has one of the worst examples around City Hall (which the city is finally trying to do something about). That said, probably because of its density, much of Manhattan doesn't seem to suffer from empty pocket parks and plazas--at least in nicer weather--to the degree that other cities may. I wonder if the High Line will also help with respect to Hudson Yards specifically although I haven't really taken a close look at the plans.
I think part of the reason it remains "nicer" is the allure of Park Ave. That stretch of Park Ave from Grand Central up to 59th is actually owned by the old Penn Railroad. It was cut-and-covered long ago for a Metro-North rail yard, and all the buildings above it lease space from the now-defunct railroad's holding company.
And what buildings they are: the Lever building and the Seagram building are two of the most important modernist skyscrapers. And 432 Park Ave is probably the most important building currently under construction.
Beyond that, a lot of the neighborhood's culture comes from the elevated lines. The 3rd Ave and 2nd Ave above-ground lines were, for a long time, a boundary. It's easy to watch the neighborhood become more residential (and to see all the old tenement buildings) as you walk east. A lot of college students and young professionals live there now, as well as a growing Japanese population centered around 52nd st. It's clear that Midtown east of 3rd Ave was always residential, if not as wealthy.
Midtown west was the exact opposite: heavily industrial. The High Line, now a park, had tons of intermodals for massive, well-known businesses such as Nabisco (the ground floor of which is now Chelsea Market). The piers were used for shipping. 11th Ave was known as "Death Avenue" because of the heavy transportation use. The neighborhood's face was shaped by warehouses, industry, and transportation, resulting in both Tribeca's industrial-chic and Midtown's seeming blocks of nothingness. Hell's Kitchen was a home to the Irish mafia. Times Square was teeming with prostitutes.
My feeling is that these histories shaped the development of the neighborhoods, and you still feel it echoing today when you step off a train and onto the island.
(BTW, I'm typing this from an Amtrak train bound for Penn Station, which has long been my least favorite place in Manhattan!)
To me Penn Station as it exists today is a prime example of how we've come to treat our vital infrastructure.
On an average morning it takes 5+ minutes to get off the platform because it's normal for two, or three, rush hour trains to be unloaded onto a single platform back-to-back which results in thousands of people trying to squeeze up four or five small staircases.
Looking around the platform the concrete is cracked, some of it creaks when you walk over it, there are huge chunks of concrete missing everywhere. Lights are constantly out, even when they're on its perpetually dark, everything is covered in a layer of filth.
The rest is the same. Cracked walls and ceilings. Filth, trash, stink, and overcrowding everywhere. Perpetually bad lighting. One good delay for any of the transit systems that converge under Penn and it becomes impossible to move as thousands of people stand around hoping for their train to arrive.
On the NJ Transit side track numbers aren't posted ahead of time. If you're lucky you might get ~10 minutes notice but during rush hour it's normal for tracks to be posted minutes before departure. So you get train fulls of people rushing back and forth to make it to the few stairs or escalators (which are usually going up even when trains down on the platform are boarding) to get to their train on time.
And despite all this Penn Station is vitally important to the area. NJ and NYC's economies benefit immeasurably from it. Even as far as Philadelphia, DC, and Boston. Yet, there it rots and crumbles. For decades. And the best we can do so far is hope for some more fancy computer renderings of something that maybe could make things better. And while we wait delays become more frequent, trains and stations get more crowded, things continue to fall apart, and the costs continue to rise.
It's possible, but folks in NYC do seem more used to political inertia and cynical resignation.
(http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/03/25/geology-and-art-co...)
You'll end up with one axis that corresponds to actual directions in the real world, while its perpendicular axis is exactly the opposite. If the "north" and "south" ends of the map are actually to the north and south, for example, east and west will be on the wrong sides.
If you put all four compass directions in their real-world locations, then the entire map is mirrored when seen from below. Maybe this rat's-eye-view of New York would be appropriate, but it would also be deeply unfamiliar and look like an enormous mistake.
There's a really good convention for public maps that are standing up on a sign (left and right correspond to what's to your left and right in the real world, and up corresponds to what's ahead of you), and there's a completely obvious convention for maps on the floor. There's no sensible convention for ceiling maps.
(I could have added that if anyone would understand why a ceiling map of NYC should be mirrored, it would be people who are familiar with star maps or people who play Kerbal Space Program.)
[1] http://www.vox.com/2014/3/31/5563600/everything-you-need-to-...
However, to Yglesias' post I'd add that, in all fairness, the underground platforms at Penn are really too narrow to have people waiting for the train on the platform and then heading into an assigned car as is common in Europe. So whether or not they checked the ticket at the top of the escalator in Penn, there would still be something of a crush as people went down to the platform from the very congested boarding area.
(What is a reasonable question is why Amtrak doesn't actually have reserved seating even on their "all reserved" trains like Acela.)
Trump was droning on about this during the debate, how our airports make us look like a third-world country or something. I don't see why anyone cares. I've taken numerous flights in and out of Laguardia. You show up there, go through security, and get on an airplane. I am not looking for excitement or a work of art. It's an airport. I want to be in and out as quickly as possible.
I only want two transportation-related improvements -- more service so I can get a seat during the day and not wait around for 30 minutes at night, and positive train control so that I don't die when someone forgets to stop at the last station. Everything else is ego-driven money wasting. (I'm looking at you, Andrew Cuomo.)
It's not an issue of beauty, it's an issue of efficiency and scale. The infrastructure hasn't scaled.
It looks like everything new will be underground, so there's not so much room for beauty. Unlike my memories of NYC, it will at least be very well lit and kept clean.
https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-proje...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Victoria_station#Curren...
My main complaints when I lived in London (in East-Central London, in E1W): a) long east-west travel times b) no overnight Tube options c) (though less important) no A/C on the Tube, are ALL being addressed.
It's depressing and sad that a city with three times the GDP (per the last time I checked), NYC, my now-home, has a shoddy and corrupt, slow-moving infrastructure upgrade plan. Every infrastructure plan costs smaller-country-budget levels of spend, takes longer than expected, and after the ribbon is cut is still behind its competition (because let's face it, international cities compete) in Europe and Asia.
Rich people like to live near pretty things, making property expensive. Witness the expensive neighborhoods in NYC (eg. Central Park perimeter) and London (green, leafy, old, Kensington, Chelsea, St James, etc.). Utilitarian, in the dictionary definition ("designed to be useful instead of attractive") is the opposite of these places.
Utiliarianism, the greatest good for the greatest many, is a different story for these places. I feel like that's what you meant.
Your suggested conclusion might be better paired with a utilitarian approach?
The dinginess of the terminals and dearth of food/shopping options are really bad too, but the biggest problems in my opinion have to do with objective issues that any stoic efficiency expert would balk at.
At least there's a Taco Bell.
Manhattan above Houston St is basically a grid with an X/Y street / ave system. It's really not that confusing nor a maze
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/16/liege-g...
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/belgium/liege-guillemins-tgv-st...
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/mtas-costs-loom-large-14688...
What we should do is focus on a completing few small projects with time and budget constraints comparable to the rest of the world (e.g. Spain, Hong Kong or Delhi). This should be done with the goal of excluding all the current people who are robbing us blind (i.e. no MTA workers); bring in French, Japanese or Indian contractors as needed.
Once we can build and maintain a transit system at reasonable cost, then we should think about big projects. Until then, why throw good money after bad?