4 ms·

The Long, Sordid History of New York’s Penn Station

32 points by wallflower 7y ago

loukrazy 7y ago
There is a great American Experience episode about the history
jcranmer 7y ago
> Penn Station is the second most heavily trafficked transit hub in the world, trailing only Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station. That is... not true. From Wikipedia's numbers, it services ~110 million people annually. Gare du Nord, by contrast, handles twice that. There's several more stations in Europe that are busier than Penn Station, and that's completely ignoring all the other Japanese stations. So what metric is the source using to even countenance such a statement being true? Double-counting subway transfers?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > it services ~110 million people annually The word “transit hub” tips me off, as a New Yorker, to the statistic including freight. Perhaps they’re counting tonnage or the total number of trains?
- elfexec 7y ago
  > From Wikipedia's numbers, it services ~110 million people annually. If you look at [Note 2], that number only includes NJTransit, LIRR and Amtrak. It doesn't count NYC metro ( which is bizarre since Penn Station is a major stop on the NYC metro and NYC metro handles much more people than NJTransit, LIRR and Amtrak combined ) or the PATH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_statio... I have hard time believing that zurich or many of these european stations handle more traffic than penn station considering how much larger NYC, NYC Metro and the tourism to NYC is compared to any of these european cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_statio... I can understand Shinjuku Station being #1, but zurich handling more people than penn station? I'm not sure about that.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Note that a decent fraction of the subway riders at Penn Station are going to be transfers to/from NJT/LIRR/Amtrak, so naïvely adding all the numbers is going to double-count a lot of people. But even if you use that double-counted number, you're only hitting ~160-170 million people. Remove the double-counting, and you're going to be down below Zurich's 150 million easily.
    - elfexec 7y ago
      > Note that a decent fraction of the subway riders at Penn Station are going to be transfers to/from NJT/LIRR/Amtrak Definitely. But the vast majority of them are going to be NYC Metro riders, not transfers. > Remove the double-counting, and you're going to be down below Zurich's 150 million easily. Right. Lets look at the numbers. NYC population is 8.4 million Zurich population is 420,000 NYC metropolitan area population is 21 million. Zurich metropolitan area population is 1.8 million. NYC had 62 million tourists in 2018. Given these numbers I find it hard to believe that a zurich station has more traffic than penn station. Granted that we have Port Authority and Grand Central drawing traffic away from Penn Station, but even so, it's pretty hard for me to believe these traffic numbers given the population disparity.
      - jcranmer 7y ago
        > Given these numbers I find it hard to believe that a zurich station has more traffic than penn station. This is my best guess for why people keep repeating such blatantly false claims as "Penn Station is the second busiest station in the world"--people just can't imagine that America is that bad at something. So, there are several factors going on here. First, NYC has two major rail termini (Penn and Grand Central), and a couple of other stations that's going to pull people off the train if they're not working in Downtown or Midtown Manhattan. Zurich has just the one I believe. Granted, Paris also has several termini. Another factor is the lack of intercity rail travel in the US. There's 3-4 trains an hour (each direction) on the NEC, and at best one an hour to Albany. Zurich has at least 4 lines each delivering 4 trains an hour (each direction). A larger share of the travel to Zurich is happening via rail than to NYC. The biggest factor, though, is that US commuter rail is just that bad. It is pretty much designed, in the US, to let people from the outlying suburbs drive to the rail station park and take the train to their 9-5 job downtown. If you work different hours, say 4-12, you're screwed. If you don't work downtown, you're screwed--suburb jobs are not reachable from outlying commuter rail stations. European countries run their rail stations less for 9-5 commuters and more as metro systems on larger scale. Consequently, they also see their rail systems get used for more than just 9-5 commuters. These commuters make up ~80% of the LIRR and more like ~50% for the Zurich S-Bahn. Also, more people use transit to commute: in NY metro area, only 30% use transit (of any form!) to commute, whereas it's again closer to 50% in Zurich.
throwaway_gdue 7y ago
The thesis is pretty bland: “autocrats can get things done faster”. But the historical context and anecdotes were interesting.
gumby 7y ago
The interesting part of this article is mostly up front and not reflected in its title. The author traces a thread of populism (of the 150-year-old-kind) through reform to technocraticism (a sort of platonism) to counter-reaction from the the same group against some failures of technocracy, which (my implication) leads straight to the strength of the current GOP reaction against expertise and support for the atomization of power. If this thesis is believable (and I am not yet convinced -- this is the first time I've seen this argument) is really puts paid to the nonsensical abstractions of "left" and "right" and does provide a philosophical model of (some) understanding the politics of the last 40 years. (I say this without claiming anybody is good, bad, saintly or evil, so please do not read this comment as being partisan on any side.)

32 points by wallflower 7y ago

There is a great American Experience episode about the history

> Penn Station is the second most heavily trafficked transit hub in the world, trailing only Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station. That is... not true. From Wikipedia's numbers, it services ~110 million people annually. Gare du Nord, by contrast, handles twice that. There's several more stations in Europe that are busier than Penn Station, and that's completely ignoring all the other Japanese stations. So what metric is the source using to even countenance such a statement being true? Double-counting subway transfers?

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> it services ~110 million people annually The word “transit hub” tips me off, as a New Yorker, to the statistic including freight. Perhaps they’re counting tonnage or the total number of trains?
elfexec 7y ago
> From Wikipedia's numbers, it services ~110 million people annually. If you look at [Note 2], that number only includes NJTransit, LIRR and Amtrak. It doesn't count NYC metro ( which is bizarre since Penn Station is a major stop on the NYC metro and NYC metro handles much more people than NJTransit, LIRR and Amtrak combined ) or the PATH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_statio... I have hard time believing that zurich or many of these european stations handle more traffic than penn station considering how much larger NYC, NYC Metro and the tourism to NYC is compared to any of these european cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_statio... I can understand Shinjuku Station being #1, but zurich handling more people than penn station? I'm not sure about that.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Note that a decent fraction of the subway riders at Penn Station are going to be transfers to/from NJT/LIRR/Amtrak, so naïvely adding all the numbers is going to double-count a lot of people. But even if you use that double-counted number, you're only hitting ~160-170 million people. Remove the double-counting, and you're going to be down below Zurich's 150 million easily.
  - elfexec 7y ago
    > Note that a decent fraction of the subway riders at Penn Station are going to be transfers to/from NJT/LIRR/Amtrak Definitely. But the vast majority of them are going to be NYC Metro riders, not transfers. > Remove the double-counting, and you're going to be down below Zurich's 150 million easily. Right. Lets look at the numbers. NYC population is 8.4 million Zurich population is 420,000 NYC metropolitan area population is 21 million. Zurich metropolitan area population is 1.8 million. NYC had 62 million tourists in 2018. Given these numbers I find it hard to believe that a zurich station has more traffic than penn station. Granted that we have Port Authority and Grand Central drawing traffic away from Penn Station, but even so, it's pretty hard for me to believe these traffic numbers given the population disparity.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      > Given these numbers I find it hard to believe that a zurich station has more traffic than penn station. This is my best guess for why people keep repeating such blatantly false claims as "Penn Station is the second busiest station in the world"--people just can't imagine that America is that bad at something. So, there are several factors going on here. First, NYC has two major rail termini (Penn and Grand Central), and a couple of other stations that's going to pull people off the train if they're not working in Downtown or Midtown Manhattan. Zurich has just the one I believe. Granted, Paris also has several termini. Another factor is the lack of intercity rail travel in the US. There's 3-4 trains an hour (each direction) on the NEC, and at best one an hour to Albany. Zurich has at least 4 lines each delivering 4 trains an hour (each direction). A larger share of the travel to Zurich is happening via rail than to NYC. The biggest factor, though, is that US commuter rail is just that bad. It is pretty much designed, in the US, to let people from the outlying suburbs drive to the rail station park and take the train to their 9-5 job downtown. If you work different hours, say 4-12, you're screwed. If you don't work downtown, you're screwed--suburb jobs are not reachable from outlying commuter rail stations. European countries run their rail stations less for 9-5 commuters and more as metro systems on larger scale. Consequently, they also see their rail systems get used for more than just 9-5 commuters. These commuters make up ~80% of the LIRR and more like ~50% for the Zurich S-Bahn. Also, more people use transit to commute: in NY metro area, only 30% use transit (of any form!) to commute, whereas it's again closer to 50% in Zurich.

throwaway_gdue 7y ago

The thesis is pretty bland: “autocrats can get things done faster”. But the historical context and anecdotes were interesting.

gumby 7y ago

The interesting part of this article is mostly up front and not reflected in its title. The author traces a thread of populism (of the 150-year-old-kind) through reform to technocraticism (a sort of platonism) to counter-reaction from the the same group against some failures of technocracy, which (my implication) leads straight to the strength of the current GOP reaction against expertise and support for the atomization of power. If this thesis is believable (and I am not yet convinced -- this is the first time I've seen this argument) is really puts paid to the nonsensical abstractions of "left" and "right" and does provide a philosophical model of (some) understanding the politics of the last 40 years. (I say this without claiming anybody is good, bad, saintly or evil, so please do not read this comment as being partisan on any side.)