NEW YORK | Penn Station / MSG Renovation

[NYguy]

Funding for final piece of Gateway in place...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/n...k-funding.html

$16 Billion Hudson River Tunnel Project Gets Final Green Light
An agreement for the federal government to pay for most of the $16 billion project means the long-delayed plan is “all systems go,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said.


By Patrick McGeehan
June 11, 2024

The planners of the $16 billion rail tunnel project known as Gateway said they passed the “point of no return” on Tuesday when the federal government told Congress that it would provide an additional $6.88 billion to the project.

The federal grant — the most ever provided to a mass-transit infrastructure project in the country — was the final piece of the funding puzzle for the long-delayed tunnel between New Jersey and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.

It gives planners of the sprawling project the green light to hire engineering and construction companies to start boring through a cliff in North Bergen, N.J., and under the Hudson River.

That work could begin as soon as this year and is scheduled to be completed in 2035, said Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of the Gateway Development Commission.

The Gateway project is the second attempt at building an additional rail tunnel to increase capacity and improve the reliability of train service between New York and points west and south. The existing pair of single-track tunnels is more than 110 years old and suffering from damage sustained by flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In 2010, work had begun to make way for a different rail tunnel under the Hudson that was known as Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC. But before signing a similar funding agreement with the federal Department of Transportation, Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey at the time, canceled the project and returned some money to Washington.

The federal government had pledged the $6.88 billion toward Gateway last year, but a detailed funding agreement that will include about $600 million annually in the federal budget had to be worked out. On Tuesday, Veronica Vanterpool, the acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, notified leaders in Congress that the administration intended to sign that agreement with Gateway in about two weeks.

Mr. Schumer said that the grant would increase the federal funding for the Gateway project to about $12 billion, about 70 percent of its estimated total cost. That total includes about $1 billion from Amtrak, which owns the existing tunnels and Penn Station.

The balance, along with any overruns, will be supplied by New York and New Jersey, Mr. Schumer said.

[ChiND]

This MSG reskin and remodel would be nice.

http://www.rwcatelier.com/rebuildpennstation

[ChiND]

At a minimum, MSG’s horrendous, dated facade must be replaced. This would be much nicer than the present 1960s facade.

https://spectorcompanies.com/portfol...square-garden/

[NYguy]

I have to say, this has been a week for the ages from the fantastical duo of Amtrak/NJ Transit. You want (need) to get into Penn Station, New York? Good luck. Good fuckin luck. It’s a disgrace what’s been happening on a daily basis now, and service wasn’t all that great before. Why worry about a new and upgraded station at all when you can’t even do the one thing it’s needed for, moving trains and passsengers across the Hudson into Midtown (and beyond)? And yet, there’s all this outrage over the congestion pricing delay. Not a peep of it here.

[Double L]

I think block 780 can afford to be improved and upgraded.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by NYguy

I have to say, this has been a week for the ages from the fantastical duo of Amtrak/NJ Transit. You want (need) to get into Penn Station, New York? Good luck. Good fuckin luck. It’s a disgrace what’s been happening on a daily basis now, and service wasn’t all that great before. Why worry about a new and upgraded station at all when you can’t even do the one thing it’s needed for, moving trains and passsengers across the Hudson into Midtown (and beyond)? And yet, there’s all this outrage over the congestion pricing delay. Not a peep of it here.

A hearty "thank you" to former Gov. Christie, who cancelled the ARC tunnel, which would have been open by now. Both Amtrak and NJT could have used ARC if main route had issues.

And then Gov. Hochul decides to pull her own CP surprise on the other side of the Hudson. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

[NYguy]

^ I get outraged every time I think about what Christie did.



Meanwhile, NJ Transit fares are set to rise 15% next month, followed by 3% yearly increases. This is no incentive to get people out of their cars. Especially with Penn Station looking like this on a daily basis...


https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/n...?adppopup=true

[NYguy]

She hasn't figured out a way to stop this yet...


govkathyhochul

[NYguy]

From a NIMBY point of view, but this trailer looks interesting if you like documentaries (I do).

Video Link

https://www.cityandstateny.com/perso...-movie/398239/

[NYguy]

Gateway continues, Portal Bridge, July 22 2024



• Video Link

[Ahoi]

Gateway Project



https://tunnelingonline.com/gateway-...nnel-contract/

https://youtu.be/hwbwKtIyvoA?feature=shared

[NYguy]

https://www.westsidespirit.com/news/...tion-ED3555107

Railway Giants Finally Unveil Why They Need to Expand Penn Station
Due to increasing demand for trains at Penn station, the three big rail users–MTA, Metro North and NJ Transit–said they need to expand the present station to meet exploding demand. Bars, retail outlets a church and a parking garage could be in peril once again of being demolished.





Michael Oreskes
05 Aug 2024

Demand for rail service into Penn Station is growing quickly again, post-covid, and the three big railroads told a community forum they will need to expand the station in the next decade or so to accommodate the increase.

The bulk of the growth is coming from New Jersey, said officials of Amtrak and NJ Transit, but the MTA said it concurs with the need for expansion and has plans of its own for more trains as Metro North joins the Long Island Railroad in serving Penn Station.

The officials spoke at a forum organized to address claims by community and advocacy groups that the railroads needlessly plan to tear down the block south of Penn Station, often referred to by its tax roll designation, Block 780, to expand the station. That block contains bars, a strip club, a Catholic Church, a big parking garage, a deli, and fast food and pizza outlets, among other businesses.

The railroads said there was a germ of a good idea in through-running, for the future, but that it would not solve the need to meet growing demand in the near-term.

Speaking at the forum held at NYU, Petra Messick, a senior Amtrack official, stressed that no decision had been made to demolish Block 780, and that the railroads were looking at expansion alternatives both north and south of the current station. Whatever plan the railroads adopt will be subjected to an environmental review that will include public hearings, she said.

“Trans-Hudson train service into Penn Station needs to be doubled, at least, to meet the existing and future needs of the region,” Said Messick. “All through-running or hybrid configurations within the footprint of the existing station fall short of this goal.”

Doubling service under the Hudson will become possible in the 2030’s, Messick noted, when construction is completed on what is known as the Gateway project, a rebuilding of the rail line between Newark and Penn Station New York that includes two new tracks under the Hudson River to supplement the two tracks built under the river in 1910 by the now defunct Pennsylvania Railroad.

Gateway, which is under way, will allow more trains, but the question bedeviling both the railroads and political leadership is where to put all those new trains in the already overcrowded Penn Station.

To bolster her argument that an expansion will be needed, Messick presented a well-known transportation consultant, Foster Nichols of the firm WSP, who said he had analyzed two proposals from advocacy groups, ReThink NYC and TriState Trnsportation, to overhaul railroad operations as an alternative to expanding the station.

“Implementing through-running will be time consuming, costly and disruptive,” Nichols said, thus risking “the timely development of urgently needed station capacity.”

He said, for example, that it would be possible to reconfigure tracks and widen platforms within the present footprint of the station, but the price would be ten years of service disruptions as bad as the one summer when New Jersey Transit had to divert more than a quarter of its trains to Hoboken.

“Gateway is the highest infrastructure priority in the entire region–and even in the nation,” said Tom Wright, President of the RPA. “New York City exists because it has access to a large, diverse and talented workforce that includes residents of the five boroughs and also over ten million residents of the wider region.”

Over a million suburbanites hold jobs in New York City, Wright noted, and nearly half, 450,000 live in New Jersey. He said that even under conservative projections–incorporating more working from home and slower growth rates–transit ridership across the Hudson will be 15 percent to 32 percent higher by 2050.

While Amtrak, which owns Penn Station, has been leading the railroads on the questions of capacity and expansion, The MTA is leading a separate process to improve the train hall above the tracks.

The rebuilding of Penn Station is one of the most complex development projects in the city’s history. For a long time, the future of the station was tied to a major redevelopment of the neighborhood that called for the construction of ten new office towers and an apartment building.

But with the office market in flux, and the principal property owner slow walking new construction, Governor Hochul “decoupled” Penn Station from this larger development plan.

[NYguy]

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/...el-experts-say

NY: NYC’s Penn Station can’t use sought-after European travel model, experts say
Through running is a largely European concept that has express commuter trains stop, and allows for drop-off or pick-up from widened platforms. Then, trains move on to serve the metro region across agency boundaries.


By Larry Higgs
Aug. 6, 2024

Study results were detailed by Foster Nichols, a WSP senior Vice President during a packed forum held at New York University Monday by the Regional Plan Association and the Municipal Art Society of New York.

Through running was proposed in 2017 By ReThink Studios and a hybrid version by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. Both were evaluated in the study in addition to a version consultants proposed and evaluated.

“We tried to make it work,” Nichols said after an hour-long presentation. “There was no combination of investments and things we could do and adjustments to train operations that would offer enough capacity to deliver 48 trains an hour.”

That’s the total capacity that the $16 billion Gateway Project to build two new Hudson River Tunnels and rehabilitate the current 115-year old tunnels will deliver when it’s completed in the mid to late 2030’s.

Three versions of through running studied that included no or minor Penn Station expansion fell short, delivering less than 48 trains an hour in the peak commuting period, Nichols said.

Through running also depends on transit agencies restructuring their service to offer “regional metro” transit style service from suburban areas to the city that run more frequently, like a subway, and cross current agency boundaries.

That concept was used on “The Train to the Game,” a joint NJ Transit-Metro North train started in 2009 that took NY Giants and Jets fans directly from New Haven Connecticut, through Penn Station New York to Secaucus Junction, where football fans changed a train to the stadium.

That train was possible because rail equipment was compatible and used the same overhead wire electric systems. But expansion of that type of service to other Metro North and Long Island Railroad lines isn’t possible because those trains get power from a third rail, officials said.

Some Penn Station track level facility expansion would be needed, Nichols said, estimating that 21 to 23 tracks would be needed for all rail services. That was based on an analysis of how through running is done in Europe and Canada, he said

It would also result in a decade-long construction period reminiscent of 2017′s ”summer of hell” Penn Station track improvement program that sent 25% of NJ Transit trans to Hoboken for the summer.

That is based on a proposal to consolidate Penn Station to 17 tracks and widen platforms, which Nichols said would require removing more than 1,000 support columns for Madison Square Garden and other structures above the station, he said.

“What we’re talking about here is a decade of hell to stage construction and have 30% fewer trains at rush hour,” Nichols said. “We could do it, but the level of construction would be massive.”

All three through running plans fell short of the capacity needed to accommodate the maximum trains the Gateway and rehabilitated North River tunnels, and addition of Metro North service from the Bronx, could provide during rush hour, the experts concluded.

“All the hybrid or through running plans fall short,” said Petra Messick, Amtrak senior capital delivery program director. “All the railroads believe Penn Station needs to be improved. It’s about how we utilize the improvements from Gateway and look and look toward through running in the future.”

Meanwhile work is beginning on the next phase of the larger Gateway program to expand Penn Station on the track level for the additional trains.

“We’ve begun planning for Penn Station capacity expansion, so we are looking at a variety of alternatives for expanding capacity to the south and to the north (of Penn Station).”

Some design work on the Penn North and South annexes will be done as part of conducting an Environmental Impact study of the alternatives, she said.

“Design work will continue through the Environmental Impact Statement and progress to 30%,” she said. “It won’t progress past 30% until the EIS process is over.”

[k1052]

The last study I saw on this had a TPH slightly below their magic 48 with through running and would save many billions not doing Penn South. Going to be a redo of the ESA where the MNRR just refused to let LIRR play in their terminal so the deep cavern scheme was born. They won't cooperate unless forced and any study they commission will of course portray such cooperation as impractical. As for the rolling stock they desperately need to replace anyway so phasing in equipment that can handle multiple voltages is much less of an issue than portrayed.

[NYguy]

People keep talking about the through running, and as someone who has to navigate those cramped platforms daily, I'm telling you it doesn't and won't make any sense unless you tear everything out and start from scratch. There's hardly enough room for passengers to get to and from the tracks now. In fact, the platforms are so narrow that they have to "herd" passengers like cattle behind a rope to get them down to the platforms at Moynihan. But besides the practicality of it working at Penn, there is the logical nature of it. No need to spend billions on getting people from Jersey to Long Island, or from Long Island to Jersey, when the overwhelming majority of those people taking the lines are trying to get into Manhattan. There's not a huge wave of people trying to cross both rivers. Would it be nice to have? Yes, it would be for the occasional journey. But the priority should and always will be getting people into and out of Penn Station. It's the only thing that makes sense.

[mrnyc]

^ yep -- and adding the four stealth subway, err, i mean mnrr commuter stations to the bronx is enough of an rer or crossrail. for the foreseeable future anyway.

[k1052]

Originally Posted by NYguy

People keep talking about the through running, and as someone who has to navigate those cramped platforms daily, I'm telling you it doesn't and won't make any sense unless you tear everything out and start from scratch. There's hardly enough room for passengers to get to and from the tracks now. In fact, the platforms are so narrow that they have to "herd" passengers like cattle behind a rope to get them down to the platforms at Moynihan. But besides the practicality of it working at Penn, there is the logical nature of it. No need to spend billions on getting people from Jersey to Long Island, or from Long Island to Jersey, when the overwhelming majority of those people taking the lines are trying to get into Manhattan. There's not a huge wave of people trying to cross both rivers. Would it be nice to have? Yes, it would be for the occasional journey. But the priority should and always will be getting people into and out of Penn Station. It's the only thing that makes sense.

The inherently inefficient of operating Penn like a stub terminal for three (eventually four when/if MNRR comes) different railroads is the real problem here. Converting it to a through station by expanding platforms and subtracting tracks is going to be disruptive no doubt about it but it will cost less than demolishing an entire midtown block to accomplish basically the same thing. I think I would actually tunnel from Penn to connect to the ESA first so that some trains can skip Penn stops during construction and eventually make it a standard service pattern.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by k1052

The inherently inefficient of operating Penn like a stub terminal for three (eventually four when/if MNRR comes) different railroads is the real problem here. Converting it to a through station by expanding platforms and subtracting tracks is going to be disruptive no doubt about it but it will cost less than demolishing an entire midtown block to accomplish basically the same thing. I think I would actually tunnel from Penn to connect to the ESA first so that some trains can skip Penn stops during construction and eventually make it a standard service pattern.

The main thing about the expansion is that it is meant to accommodate the expanded service that will be coming into Penn Station, specifically to get people who are commuting into the city for various reasons, but mostly work. The rails there are reportedly being planned for thru-running service, and would be adequate for such sense there won't be the demand to justify it. There is not enough room at the existing Penn for expanded platforms, even considering the disruptions, to meet demand. If anyone were serious about getting some expanded service into Manhattan, the now under construction rail tunnel would have been the perfect chance to get an extended 7 line service into Secaucus and points beyond. (MetLife, American Dream). There's a tunnel that was built decades ago under the east river that carries the subway on one level, and the LIRR on another. A shame that wasn't considered for Gateway.

But back to the matter of the block being demolished, I don't understand why everyone doesn't understand that most of it would be demolished anyway. We're talking about large parking lots and older buildings that won't survive the coming wave of development that will surround the rebuilt Penn Station. It's a block most certainly primed for development than some of the other existing buildings and blocks in Midtown that are being demolished for new towers.

[k1052]

Originally Posted by NYguy

The main thing about the expansion is that it is meant to accommodate the expanded service that will be coming into Penn Station, specifically to get people who are commuting into the city for various reasons, but mostly work. The rails there are reportedly being planned for thru-running service, and would be adequate for such sense there won't be the demand to justify it. There is not enough room at the existing Penn for expanded platforms, even considering the disruptions, to meet demand. If anyone were serious about getting some expanded service into Manhattan, the now under construction rail tunnel would have been the perfect chance to get an extended 7 line service into Secaucus and points beyond. (MetLife, American Dream). There's a tunnel that was built decades ago under the east river that carries the subway on one level, and the LIRR on another. A shame that wasn't considered for Gateway.

But back to the matter of the block being demolished, I don't understand why everyone doesn't understand that most of it would be demolished anyway. We're talking about large parking lots and older buildings that won't survive the coming wave of development that will surround the rebuilt Penn Station. It's a block most certainly primed for development than some of the other existing buildings and blocks in Midtown that are being demolished for new towers.

The biggest issue with Penn's capacity is long dwells caused by piss poor vertical circulation from the platform level up and secondarily the space available at both platform and concourse level. Improve these and you can squeeze way more efficiency out of the existing footprint. As for what the RRs say they must have in terms of capacity expansion they are just extrapolating the absolute maximum TPH that the tunnels can service and saying that's what they need, regardless of cost. If they can save billions at the price of say 42 or 44 TPH instead of 48 TPH then they will decide to spend unlimited money. Exact same thing happened at Grand Central/ESA. Alternatives came out to about 20 TPH and they said nope cannot settle for anything less than 24 TPH and so spent a fortune on their Journey to the Center of the Earth build uncaring about the major drawbacks.

I do agree that the 7 (and the L really) should have been sent into NJ.

As for development around Penn I'm not holding my breath. The office market is in the dumper and without that rebounding in a major way the prospect of major development here is negligible for the foreseeable future.