![]() ![]() A single-level version shaves off about 79,000 square feet from an upper floor that relatively few people will use. A two-level design preserves the maximum amount of floor space, paid for with ceilings low enough to muss a tall man’s hair. Failing that, a rebuilt station has to find the right balance between elbow room and headroom, and the new plan comes in two different varieties. Maybe that option still exists in some hypothetical future. The ideal response is to move the Garden elsewhere, a solution that nobody, from the governor on down, apparently has the stomach to fight for. With Madison Square Garden sitting immovably on top of the station, the box for the station is only so big. There’s plenty more work to do, and I hope the MTA pushes as hard for architectural ambition as for logistical efficiency, because the two should really be indistinguishable. It’s no good having state-of-the-art signboards if all they do is keep you informed of delays. A beautiful waiting room is fine a system that doesn’t keep you waiting is better. More important, the plans merge the need for breathing room and a little daily grandeur with the invisible necessities of more efficient transit. Suddenly, we’re talking corridor widths, sources of daylight, numbers of escalators. These are not yet finished designs, but they’re not doodles, either. The design, developed by the railroad triumvirate with the architecture firm FXCollaborative and the engineering firm WSP, amalgamates the jumble of bureaucratic fiefdoms, decades’ worth of duct-tape fixes, and a thicket of conflicting agendas into a rail hub that might one day be a thing of, if not quite beauty, at least satisfaction - maybe even pride. And, lo and behold, they are both aspirational and realistic. A few months later, the MTA, Amtrak, and NJ Transit have jointly released not one but two possible visions for rebuilding the rest of the Dantesque complex. Then Moynihan Train Hall opened, and even before the echo of Cuomo’s crowing had died away, it was already being treated as a promising step to more glories down the tracks. The dream of a tolerable Penn Station once seemed like the most lost of lost causes, a chimera certain to vanish on contact with the mingled scent of urine and cooking grease in one of those crimped, low-ceilinged corridors with the damp stains and dangling wires. Even more astonishing, much of this optimism centers on that long-festering sinkhole at the center of the city, Penn Station. Andrew Cuomo dangles the joys of commuting by rail, in part because being seen as the state’s master builder may be the key to staying in his job. Mobility activists are quivering with excitement: The president loves trains! Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks with aplomb about a wide range of transit minutiae, from bike lanes to starfighter shields. Whatever the trigger, conversations about public transportation that not long ago seemed hopeless and abstract now ring with specificity. Perhaps it’s the lyrical cadence of the word infrastructure. The preferred option for Penn Station’s redevelopment is a single-level facility centred around a grand train hall with a 140m long sky-lit atrium between Madison Square Garden and 2 Penn Plaza.Maybe it’s spring, or the sprightly pace of vaccinations, or the spell of Democratic Washington. Last year commuters were consulted on two options for improving Penn Station, which had a grand Beaux Arts building at ground level until 1963, when it was demolished to make way for the Madison Square Garden arena. But the underground station – which hosts Amtrak, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and NJ Transit trains – has long been considered in need of updating. Penn Station is the United States’ busiest transport hub, and was serving 600,000 travellers every weekday before the coronavirus pandemic. The practice’s work on the renovation of London’s King’s Cross Station a decade ago, which delivered a new naturally-lit concourse, was cited in the appointment announcement by New York State governor Kathy Hochul. John McAslan & Partners has been appointed to redesign New York City’s outdated and overcrowded Penn Station as part of a project team led by FXCollaborative Architects and WSP USA. Source: Metropolitan Transportation AuthorityĮarly-stage proposals for the redevelopment of New York’s Penn Station Construction business: Strategy, risk and regulations. ![]()
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