“To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.”

Since the original Pennsylvania Station, completed in 1910, was demolished in 1963 to replace the Gilded Age structure with a more modernist design and office space, many articles have lamented what their authors called a “monumental act of vandalism.”

Over 600,000 passengers on Amtrak, Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit trains pass through Penn Station daily, making it busier than Heathrow Airport in London, and even busier than JFK, La Guardia and Newark airports combined.

According to an article in the New York Times, new plans call for Penn Station to be rerouted to the nearby James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue. Designed by the same firm that worked on the original Penn Station, the façade of the post office and the original train station are strikingly similar.

For visitors on cheap flights to New York City, there are a number of plans that have the potential to change commuting or traveling by rail for the better. The city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has looked into the possibility of pedestrianizing 33rd street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues to improve access to the station.

Others propose moving Madison Square Garden across town, and rerouting all trains completely to the nearby post office to make “a light-filled Penn Station, a monument to the city’s best self and biggest dreams.”

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Source: New York Times
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