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[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

it's busy, but there are plenty of others outside of Japan that beat Penn Station, such as Gare de Nord in Paris, Hamburg Hbf, Frankfurt Hbf, London Waterloo, London Victoria, Gare de Lyon, Roma Termini, etc.

Penn Station is way down the list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations

Penn Station, at least in normal, pre-pandemic times, had 700,000 daily rail passengers. Hamburg and Frankfurt didn't even have half that. Termini had around half that.

I don't know about the rest, but Penn is usually cited as the busiest rail station outside of Japan. I've been to every station you've mentioned and I'd be really surprised if any of those are busier, esp. given they're mostly intercity rail stations, and intercity trains carry far fewer passengers per hour apples-apples.

The logistics behind intercity rail movement is totally different than commuter rail movement. Frankfurt HBF, to take an example, has 4 commuter rail tracks and one commuter rail route passing thru. It isn't even the busiest commuter rail station in Frankfurt. Hauptwache is busiest (but has zero intercity). In contrast, Penn Station, most of the time, has 19 tracks dedicated to commuter rail.

Now if we're talking intercity rail, yes, all these stations are much, much busier than Penn, obviously. Amtrak is nothing compared to Western Europe.