MTA Appears to be Retreating on Big Penn Plans, Despite Hochul’s Recent Statements

The MTA has dramatically scaled back its plans for rebuilding Penn Station even as Governor Kathy Hochul was saying publicly that she wants commuters to have a “magnificent” station that rivals Amtrak’s Moynihan station.

The retreat was a dramatic, and to many advocates ignominious, turn in what has been one of the most exciting development debates in the city’s recent past, with civic groups, developers and the railroads that use the station all competing to envision something new and better than the dismal hub commuters experience each day.

While MTA officials declined to say anything publicly about their reduced ambitions for renovating the station, they presented the scaled back plans to the members of the group they have assembled to advise them and their partner railroads, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

Members of this Station Working Advisory Group (SWAG) said they were taken by surprise by the reversal, after several years of raised expectations that included elaborate renderings of a light drenched train hall, as well as even more elaborate plans presented by outside groups seeking to compete for approval to design a new station.

“It’s really pretty shocking to see how far they’ve pulled back,” one member of the advisory group said. Eliminated from their plans is a greenhouse like train hall built in the present taxiway on the east side of Madison Square Garden between 31st and 33d streets, according to advisory group members who received the briefing.

The taxiway was closed as a security precaution after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Also dropped was any plan to improve the loading bays for Madison Square Garden, which are too small to accommodate all the freight. The result is trucks jammed on the street outside The Garden. “The MTA’s answer was that’s MSGs problem,” one advisory group member reported.

Reopening the underground passage from Penn Station to Herald Square was also deferred. One dumbfounded member of the advisory group said the MTA’s new plans approached Penn Station like a big subway station.

“I think what they’ve kind of done is they’ve said, ‘if you were to approach this in a completely utilitarian way and just tried to create some more headroom and wider concourses what would you do?’,” an advisory committee member reported, “and that’s what they’ve put on the table. I think it falls far short of what expectations have been and what the ambition has been. I can’t imagine this going over well. It’s so scaled down and watered down from what’s been seen before.”

The MTA told the advisory group that its pared back plans were “focused on making high-priority, critical safety and functionality improvements to the station as it exists today.” The station’s 600,000 daily users is triple what it was designed for, which makes it not only unpleasant but potentially dangerous in a fire or other emergency, officials have warned.

The revised renovation plan, for example, would add 15 stairways to make it easier to get on and off the often-overcrowded platforms, an increase to 57 from the current 42. Five elevators would also be added, an increase from 17 to 22. Escalators would be slightly reduced, from 31 to 28.

“Stairs represent the most effective element for maximizing egress,” the railroads told the advisory group.

The new plan would improve entrances at the corners of the station, on Eighth Ave. and 31st and 33d street and at the middle of those blocks. The improvements would echo the successful new entrance at 33d St. and Seventh Ave. that leads to an expanded Long Island Railroad corridor.

The future of Penn Station is one of the biggest development challenges facing the city. Amtrak owns the station, but its largest users are the commuter railroads, New Jersey Transit and the MTA’s Long Island Railroad. Amtrak and NJ Transit say they will need to double the station’s capacity in the next decade to meet rising demand for service from across the Hudson. In their planning process, the railroads have separated that expansion project, which is being run by Amtrak, from the rebuilding of the present station, under the direction of the MTA.

For several years the MTA has offered dramatic renderings of a rebuilt station. These in fact prompted private groups to up the ante with even more dramatic plans. ASTM, the infrastructure company, proposed tearing down the HULU theater and using the reclaimed space to build a grand entrance hall from Eight Ave. into Penn Station. The MTA had long said that was too expensive, but Governor Hochul had promised there would be a design competition for the station’s future.

Just last week Governor Hochul told a business breakfast that Penn Station was a “blight” and an “eyesore” that she wanted replaced with “something as magnificent as Moynihan station greeting visitors from all over.” It was unclear how the MTA’s reduced ambitions fit with the governor’s hopes or her previous commitment to a design competition. An MTA official declined to comment on the plans for Penn Station, saying only that “preliminary engineering is underway, and we’ll have additional updates in the coming months.”

The MTA’s new plans would be substantially cheaper at a time when it is hard pressed to raise enough money for all the capital spending it needs for the subways and commuter railroads. But the new plan also seemed to be designed to be faster, too, and small enough to avoid major environmental review. Officials said they had asked for exemption from national environmental review requirements for the station renovation.

The expansion plans, however, would still need to go through such review, especially as they seem likely, based on Amtrak’s current position, to require demolition of neighboring blocks. MTA officials told the advisory group that some of the more ambitious station rebuilding plans might be revived later as part of the station expansion. But advisory group members were skeptical of the idea of rebuilding twice.

One moving part is the future of Madison Square Garden, which has sat atop Penn Station since the original was torn down in the 1960’s. Since the MTA offered its original, more expansive plans, The City Council has granted The Garden a five-year extension of its permit to operate, a relatively short leash that will soon reopen the entire debate of relocating The Garden.

ASTM and the MTA have both argued that a much-improved station can be built with the Garden in place. But the most ambitious plans, including rebuilding the original McKim, Mead and White Train Hall or creating a park with transparent pools to light the station beneath, still call for moving the Garden.

MTA officials put no total price tag on their revised renovation plans, members of the advisory group said. Earlier this month the Federal Railway Administration granted the MTA $72.5 million for planning “to renovate and modernize Penn Station.” “This project will enable safer and more efficient station operations by increasing concourse capacity and access both within and outside the station,” the FRA said, “improving ventilation and fire safety, and installing user-friendly wayfinding. The result will be a reduction in the state of good repair backlog along the Northeast Corridor.”

At the same time the FRA made a separate grant of $71.9 million to Amtrak to plan the expansion of the station’s capacity. “This project will boost capacity and expand services for passengers, including the addition of track and platforms, concourses, and amenities. The result will accommodate projected demand and capitalize on the additional capacity enabled by the Gateway Program of projects, including the additional track capacity from the Hudson Tunnel Project.”

This expansion is ultimately expected to cost billions, split among the federal government, the two states and the railroads.