Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Also, the reason MSG should move is bc it sucks in the context of Penn Station/Seventh Ave. Moving it across the street, but still on top of Penn and still fronting Seventh, does nothing on either count. In some ways it's worse, bc now you'd have a brand new arena guaranteed to be there for 50+ years minimum.
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Crawford, I usually agree with everything you say, especially in CE, but this take is just wrong. Penn Station/Herald Square is the transport epicenter of Manhattan. What holds Penn back with MSG on top is it prevents a grand train station, the kind we all have in mind, from becoming reality. Moving it across the street would retain it in a transit hub. There is no Penn Station to be on top of on the east side of 7 Av, unless you consider the throat tunnels to be part of Penn Station, the user experience. If anything the biggest potential here is not only the de-capping of Penn so it can become a grand train station again, but the potential to put the added capacity of Penn South under the new MSG in the 7/8/32/34 block instead of demolishing the entire south side of 31 St, especially as terminating tracks for service not intended to continue east (a new 31 St tunnel could be accomplished by branching redesigning the throat of the current 32 St tunnel). Trains accessing these new platforms would be accomplished by either bored tubes or cut and cover below the lower level of Penn to snake dedicated terminating trains into the new area below MSG. Essentially this would create a continuous concourse from 9 Av to 6 Av and would include a completely rejuvenated 34/Herald Sq & PATH complex, with the PATH "terminal" ideally turned into a through station by a set of tracks that turn west and provide for a extension routing back across the Hudson into Bergan County deep into the future.
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