Connect Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal:
Linking Manhattan’s two train depots is the smartest way forward
In only one year, London’s $18 billion pound ($22.4 billion) investment in the Elizabeth Line, a new rail line that crosses from west to east through central London has already carried 150 million passengers. It is the busiest line in the U.K. and is nearly equal to the 160 million annual ridership of the LIRR, Metro-North and NJTransit combined. This does not reflect well on the LIRR’s new $11 billion East Side Access project, nor Amtrak’s proposed $40 billion Gateway plan. The public needs to demand something more ambitious and connective like the Elizabeth Line if New York is spending more than $50 billion.
Unfortunately, since the LIRR’s Grand Central Madison station opened we’ve not seen as much ridership as the Elizabeth Line and it is only projected to receive 162,000 passengers when fully utilized (projection pre-COVID). Additionally, those who take the Long Island Rail Road to and from Penn Station have been complaining about a decrease in service. How can the opening of an important new terminal at Grand Central feel like a cut in service?
The answer is due to a lack of regional thinking and planning. London’s Elizabeth Line has a much broader series of ambitions than the MTA’s East Side Access and Amtrak’s proposed Gateway program. That can be changed if New York and New Jersey are ready for a paradigm shift in the way the LIRR, MNR and NJT operate through Manhattan.
Grand Central Madison’s shortcoming is that it only helps Long Islanders reach East Midtown Manhattan and does so by requiring the LIRR’s scheduling department to split the destinations from each branch, making what was previously a train every 30 minutes on the Port Washington and Babylon branches into hourly train service.
Because Penn Station and Grand Central are two separate facilities and are not linked, the only other option for increased service to Penn is for the LIRR to purchase more trains and double the number of train crews, both of which would be too costly to operate. Compare that to the success of the Elizabeth Line, which is poised to break even this year.
At Penn Station, Amtrak’s Gateway plans are poised to make a similar mistake, focused on adding capacity only for Amtrak and NJT into Penn Station. By only adding capacity to Penn Station, Gateway will not allow what NJT’s own studies have shown — that 35% of NJT riders want access to Grand Central.
London’s Elizabeth Line brings a host of local and regional travel time reduction goals together. Linking Amtrak’s Gateway and MTA’s East Side Access could have a similar huge impact on reducing travel time by rail in the New York metropolitan region as well as cut traffic congestion across the Hudson and East River bridges and tunnels, encouraging more drivers to take commuter trains instead of driving.
Physically, a link between Grand Central and Penn Station can be done — by either repositioning tracks 1 through 4 or by constructing a deep tunnel station below Penn Station thus avoiding tearing down the block south of Penn Station, known as Block 780. Then if we focus on building a connection (instead of building Penn South) to the LIRR’s East Side Access, NJT riders could reach destinations in Queens and Long Island, and LIRR and Metro-North trains can reach destinations in New Jersey.
The biggest problem here is the parochial thinking of Amtrak and the commuter rail agencies and lack of political leadership that puts customers’ needs over agencies. Someone, the mayor, the governors of New York and New Jersey or perhaps Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or even President Biden, “Amtrak Joe,” needs to step up and champion this kind of thinking.
Most cities around the world invest in new and expensive rail infrastructure that improves connectivity allowing more regional access. With just one investment London’s one year old Elizabeth line has equaled the ridership of all three commuter railroads. The current investments in East Side Access and Amtrak’s Gateway are expensive and have limited growth potential. The time has come for New York to build something big that justifies a $50 billion dollar expenditure.
Making a connection between Penn Station and Grand Central that allows all three commuter rail lines to operate from one end of the metropolitan region to the other will greatly increase attractiveness of the service and usher in an era of dramatically increased commuter rail use as much as London has just shown with the Elizabeth Line.
Nagaraja is a former president of MTA Capital Construction. Sackel is a former Amtrak and Port Authority director of the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) Project. Previdi is a former transit planner and spokesman for NYC Transit.
