Quote:
Originally Posted by Submariner
Great. And 2 Penn will continue to be a shit building, Penn Station will continue to be a 3rd world disaster, and MSG will continue to look like an ugly tumor that has no place being situated where it is.
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I've pointed this out a million times - and I guess they're now saying it more loudly judging by the presentation
linked above - that the entire premise of Moynihan is to improve circulation in the existing station by fundamentally shuffling all/most of the customer-facing facilities (ie. ticketing, information, waiting areas, retail, etc) into a larger area meant to handle it such that the existing station can be re-configured.
If you get rid of most of the existing retail space in the station, you can add new concourses, new stairwells, install elevators, so on.
Now, whether improving circulation (eg. elevators, new points to access platforms, etc) shouldn't be done if platform-level improvements aren't also being made is a little irrelevant to me, because 1) they're not mutually exclusive (both are necessary, and doing one doesn't mean you're not going to do the other) and 2) even demolishing MSG isn't going to solve all of our problems, because regional rail services
need to rationalized so that PSNY isn't operating as a pseudo-terminal for some services (eg. LIRR, NJT).
Platform-level issues and capacity constraints can be solved by improving service and administration of the railroads even without removing MSG...many tracks could probably be gotten rid of and the remaining platforms widened.
As it stands, expanding the station will be a quite dramatic improvement, so long as they meaningfully make the correct interventions in the old building.
I don't like Cuomo, but the basic assumptions guiding these improvements are largely sound: You can make PSNY function far better than it currently does by improving circulation. Fixing the issues with train movements and the tunnels is paramount, but not making the former fixes won't mean the latter get fixed faster: Nothing would happen.