Moynihan Station gets $83M in stimulus bucks

pointless moneypit

The most used transit hub in all of north america is crowded, disfunctional, and ugly as sin.... and can't fit all the trains it needs.

improving it is "pointless"? really?

It's not an improvement, it's just a way to free up the expensive real estate of the well-positioned current station, shunt it over to 9th Avenue, and redevelop the land. Perhaps it's escaped your attention that Madison Square Garden is always half a step from relocation also.

Ugly as sin is an irreversible mistake from 1963. Moynihanian's dangle the GPO's 8th Avenue facade as if it's a return to the destroyed station's aesthetics, which it's not ... but that part will not be where the new station is to be. Bait and switch. The new station as proposed is also ugly as sin, and I'm not convinced it will be any less crowded, given the current trend to consider major transportation facilities as little more than shopping mall decorations and traffic drivers.

Segue to function and crowds in the current station: eminent-domain the space that's taken up by Kmart and the like, and put a few duplicate track-announcement boards up, and it will all work out for a teeny fraction of the cost to the MTA and many levels of government.

But good to see your supporting more union jobs at public expense!

It's great to see you attacking unions while getting your facts wrong. First of all, the MTA costs are not the issue at here, as New Jersey Transit will be the primary tenant at the new Penn Station, not the MTA. So I assume they will be paying the bulk of the costs.

Interesting article for those of us who use Penn Station frequently. I wasn't aware that the post office location would be used for Amtrak primarily. If you take the LIRR, it's always a mad rush to go down the steps to take the trains because they only have tracks 15-21 in use for LIRR trains. Hopefully, they will be able to expand into other parts of Penn Station for additional LIRR track service. Where will the NJ transit trains leave from- Penn Station or the post offfice location?
In any event, if they ever complete this project, I'll be stunned and if they ever add a Grand Central station stop for the LIRR trains, I'll be more than amazed.

No, Amtrak will stay in the current Penn Station. NJ Transit will be the main tenant in the post office.

From Wikipedia:

Amtrak was to be the major tenant of the new building, leaving the old station for use by the NYC commuter rail passengers. Signs of construction appeared in November 2005, with plywood barriers installed on the sidewalks and orange nets covering main facade on 8th Avenue.[27]

Amtrak, however, subsequently decided not to move from its present location, leaving New Jersey Transit as the Moynihan Station's anchor tenant. NJ Transit has been negotiating a 99-year lease on the Farley Post Office.

Will the LIRR expand into the upstairs area currently used by NJ Transit in Penn Station?

The post office is a big space. I guess much of it will be used as commercial space if both Amtrak and LIRR stay in Penn Station.

Your article got me curious about what is going on with this project.

http://www.moynihanstation.org/newsite

how can you call this a money pit? NYC needs as much capacity as it can get. If I had to go to Penn station every day I would wish death on myself. That place is awful

I'm just not convinced that an out-of-the-way shopping mall is the answer ... but I am convinced that soon enough they'll move all the other rail operators into Moynihan, and tear down Penn, leaving many commuters with a half-mile walk to Herald Square to pick up their subway trains. That's after they get to their commuter stations in the first place. Expect lots more driving all the way into the city.

And by the way, its proponents love to show the great big glass roof over the drab interior/exterior walls. Imagine that roof aging over even a few years. Lovely.

And yes, Penn is so awful that people are willing to back anything, no matter how much more awful.

I took the LIRR every day for several years, first to Manhattan and then to Brooklyn Heights. You just get used to it. Penn Station is actually much better than it was. For example, there used to be no place to use a rest room and you needed to walk over to Macys for that purpose. There are now several places to buy coffee, etc. It's certainly not Grand Central which is so much prettier to walk through.

LIRR trains stopping at Grand Central would be a huge quality of life improvement for me, only to be topped if they also had non-peak trains (i.e. reverse commuting trains) leaving from Hunter's Point. I could stop driving... But by the time all of this happens, I might be retired anyway.

Beam, I would be so happy if the LIRR made stops at Grand Central. But you're right that we'll all be very very old before this happens, if it ever does.

Yeah, alan, you're just off in your facts here.

This isn't moving penn station, this is ADDING to capacity. If you think there is enough capacity now, you don't know the facts.

You seem to be completely missing the point that it is an *additional* facility.

" Perhaps it's escaped your attention that Madison Square Garden is always half a step from relocation also."

You're like two years behind in your facts here. That ship sailed. They're renovating the current garden, to start after the season ends.

If you think that the other railroads and MSG won't be relocated in a not-so-far-off subsequent plan, you're living in a dream world.

On the scale of modern budgets, is the Garden spending that much on "renovation"? I doubt it.

Given that they're basically getting rid of every exterior wall, and completely rebuilding the bowl... yes. Absolutely.

You think you can buy a new arena in Manhattan for those $$$?

Now THAT is a funny one.

And it's not hard to see why they'd be so willing to play a lose-battle-win-war game: soft office market now, but recovery in the future seems likely enough.

Take a look at that superblock and imagine it with as much rentable office space as zoning would permit, instead of the stubby little buildings that are there now. Those could be blown away by the first vornado to come along.

By the way, are the GPO's air rights available for future sale?

No, I think they'd be happy to throw away those costs after 10 or 15 years to build a new arena. Seriously, cladding and seating aren't that expensive.

Which is it, alan? You seem to be arguing against themselves. It too expensive a renovation to be just a renovation? Then its suddenly cheap, and they'll run away from it in 10 years?

Can't have it both ways...

To what are you referring? First I said that MSG is spending chump change on renovations, then I made it clear that they'd gladly walk away from their chump change investment to build a new arena soon enough.

Or are you trying to conflate my statement about the $$$$$$$$$$$$ for Moynihan with my statement about the $ for MSG renov?

> On the scale of modern budgets, is the Garden spending that much on "renovation"? I doubt it.

that was about Moynihan? Really?

MSN renovation cost - $850 million (and likely to go over)

Chump change? Really?

Remember, Yankee Stadium from scratch wasn't that much more...

"Eventually, the Moynihan complex is supposed to replace Pennsylvania Station..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/opinion/24wed4.html?scp=1&sq=moynihan%20station&st=cse

$850 million or not, you do the math.

Bonus algebra word problem:

If one train is going 40 miles per hour coming from Long Island, and Joe Suburbia has to schlep by foot from the 9th Avenue Moynihan Station to his Herald Square subway connection half a mile away at the rate of a worn-out commuter who really wants a one-seat ride, after dealing with the hassle of finding parking at his home station in Hicksville, how fast will said commuter switch to his nice comfy Buick Roadmaster and drive the whole way into the city instead?

After an $850 million renovation, MSG wouldn't get torn down and replaced for at least 20 years.
Adding a better, new transportation terminal across the street from one of the city's most crowded is a good thing. The key is in how well this plan is executed.

I really don't know where alan comes up with his arguments.

I really don't know why the new terminal would be "better" ... because its cheerleaders want you to think so? Better would be one block over in the other direction, or a minor or major rebuild on it current site. Siberia is worse, not better.

They might as well build it in Long Island City.

> I really don't know why the new terminal would be "better"

Again, one more time... they're out of room, so more room is better. They need room to fit the trains.

If you literally mean the trains, that's hard to believe, given that the heyday of train travel was the early 1950s, to put it very mildly ... and that the Pennsylvania Station was pretty much where every overseas ocean liner passenger connected, if not actually based in NY.

If you mean the passengers, they need only remove the adjacent retail for more space ... KMart will probably remove itself any month now anyway.

They're soft-pedaling soft-serve shit that nobody would accept as one big turd. A gigantic Vornado of crap.

If they were truly rebuilding http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON004.htm I'd be all for it, at any cost.

wow those pictures of the old Penn make Grand central look like the new Penn station

Exactly. And the new Penn Station looks like the new US Embassy in London, which has been compared to "any glass office block".

Although I do concede this point, if they're not including subway traffic: "Even though use had dwindled from 109 million people in 1945 to 55 million in 1960, by 1998 the number had risen to 500 million annually, with further growth expected."

Eddie, do the twist.

It used to be called Federal money, now it is called stimulus.

"If you literally mean the trains, that's hard to believe, given that the heyday of train travel was the early 1950s, to put it very mildly"

Alan, you can believe whatever you want, but you are wrong here. There are FAR more commuter trains now.