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Idiotic Penn Station Master Plan


Union Tpke

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It's not that bad.

Penn Station has extremely narrow platforms, and as a result, has poor vertical circulation. In my experiences, the non-main platform at Penn Station can often take a full three minutes to fully empty one trainload. There's enough space in Penn Station to consolidate the platforms and tracks into wider, more capable platforms, but with the current setup you can't get from today's layout to the better one without massive disruptions.

Building a Penn South, as expensive as it is, is one way to get around that; in the same way that Gateway will be the only two-tracks operating while they upgrade the other North River Tunnels, these platforms will be able to take loads off of the existing platforms so that they can be modified.

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33 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

It's not that bad.

Penn Station has extremely narrow platforms, and as a result, has poor vertical circulation. In my experiences, the non-main platform at Penn Station can often take a full three minutes to fully empty one trainload. There's enough space in Penn Station to consolidate the platforms and tracks into wider, more capable platforms, but with the current setup you can't get from today's layout to the better one without massive disruptions.

Building a Penn South, as expensive as it is, is one way to get around that; in the same way that Gateway will be the only two-tracks operating while they upgrade the other North River Tunnels, these platforms will be able to take loads off of the existing platforms so that they can be modified.

Depending on how everything's set up, it could allow for easier through-running (though I honestly have very few ideas I remotely approve of in that department, considering the rail systems on both sides of the Hudson).

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18 minutes ago, Lex said:

Depending on how everything's set up, it could allow for easier through-running (though I honestly have very few ideas I remotely approve of in that department, considering the rail systems on both sides of the Hudson).

Even if the new platforms directly didn't, the ability to make the existing platforms wider once the new platforms can take the load of the existing ones, would make through running more feasible.

Only clearing one train every 3 minutes is not going to lead to effective through-running operations. 

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14 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Can someone give me an ELI5 version of what they're planning to do with Penn Station?

Someone else can jump in with additional info, but I think the main thing is that they will add 8 extra tracks (and presumably some platforms) to the South of the existing station

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On 1/19/2020 at 1:29 PM, checkmatechamp13 said:

Someone else can jump in with additional info, but I think the main thing is that they will add 8 extra tracks (and presumably some platforms) to the South of the existing station

It's an engineering nightmare. It's literally IND and BMT in railroad form. 

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