• Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
    1·
    1 month ago

    Moynihan Hall occupies part of what had been New York’s main post office building, a block west of the original Penn Station. It was situated over the tracks, with access to platforms, to facilitate Railway Post Office mail delivery, which was common into the 1970’s. After the post office moved its sorting operations elsewhere, it was relatively straightforward to repurpose it as an extension of the adjacent railroad station, which is why it only took the better part of 50 years.

    • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
      1·
      1 month ago

      Adding the Moynihan Hall was a welcome improvement to Penn Station, but didn’t address the main problem, which is insufficient capacity for the number of trains that run through it. There aren’t enough tracks, the platforms are too narrow, and the tunnels entering and leaving the station have too limited capacity. These more fundamental constraints will be much harder to solve, because the underground area around the station is already heavily crowded.

      • The Wookie@mindly.social
        0·
        1 month ago

        @mattblaze

        The Hudson River Tunnel project is moving forward and will fix the primary bottleneck for train travel between NY and NJ by doubling tunnel capacity and adding redundancy. The underground train yard has already been expanded.

        Key to improving the traveler experience at Penn Station is the consistent flow of trains so there aren’t crowd back-ups in station areas or platforms.