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Comment by alexhutcheson | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint, I'd recommend reading Alon Levy's blog post "Why the Focus On Penn Station?"[1]. The TL;DR is that the 650,000/day ridership number significantly overstates actual ridership, and includes subway ridership that wouldn't really benefit from most proposed improvements.

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...

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That's ridiculous. Excluding the subway, there's still approximately 110k riders each way on the LIRR[1] and 90k each way on NJ Transit[2]. Plus amtrak, you're talking about ~450,000 daily rail passengers. That would still make Penn Station one of the 3 busiest train stations in Europe, for context.

[1] http://transitdocs.com/files/data/lirr/2012RidershipBook.pdf [2] http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/FactsAtaGlance.pdf

I have to agree. The destruction of the old Penn Station was a tragedy, but it is over and done with. We need to look forward to what the best use of resources is today for the people of NYC. And that's not a pretty building -- it's increased capacity, resiliency, and safety.

Perhaps, but that mindset is what led to the tragedy you mention in the first place...

I don't think MSG and associated office tower did much good for the people of NYC. They certainly didn't increase capacity, resiliency, and safety of the mass transit system.

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.

The difference is that fixing up Penn Station is mostly just a matter of throwing money at the problem. Things like CBTC and increased capacity require sensitive negotiations with unions and local businesses.

All the mall shoppers ambling about make it a PITA to exit the place without a direct escalator out.

"We need to look forward to what the best use of resources is today for the people of NYC. And that's not a pretty building -- it's increased capacity, resiliency, and safety."

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...

Call me old-fashioned, but all of those look positively hideous to me.

Also building that new tunnel under the Hudson!

True, a new tunnel would be a huge benefit for regional transit. Unfortunately, the astronomical cost estimates (recent estimates were ~$16 billion for the tunnel alone), make it pretty hard to justify on a cost-benefit basis.

NYC area construction costs are out of control relative to most of the developed world.

How on earth can it cost 16bn for a tunnel?

Or is it something more complicated like London crossrail which cost a similar amount.

It's not that complicated. Manhattan is very developed which raises construction costs substantially, but ultimately construction costs here are still dramatically out of line.

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.

I think the astronomical price tag is for the whole Gateway Project not just the tunnel, there's the expansion as well as refurbishing of the existing tunnel that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy. This article is a good insight into how convoluted the whole project is:

https://nextcity.org/features/view/gateway-tunnel-project-hu...

I don't think it is for the tunnel alone. I think it is for all of the other work like a transit yard, more train carts, better train communication, more maintenance faciliities, etc, that boosted the price to $16b.

> 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 don't think it is for the tunnel alone. I think it is for all of the other work like a transit yard, more train carts, better train communication, more maintenance faciliities, etc, that boosted the price to $16b.

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.

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