LIRR to get upgraded Penn Station by 2020

If all goes well, by 2020 Long Island Rail Road commuters and Amtrak passengers will have a new, nearly $1.6 billion Penn Station, which will expand into the nearby James A. Farley Post Office, at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans for the project at a Sept. 27 news conference.

Three companies –– Related Companies, Vornado Realty LP and Skanska AB –– have been selected to redevelop the post office and create a new 255,000-square-foot Moynihan Train Hall, which will house LIRR ticketing and waiting areas as well as 112,000 square feet of retail space. Security, officials emphasized, will be state-of-the-art.

“Penn Station is definitely outdated,” said commuter Keith Boccio, 24, of Valley Stream. “I hope they also put some money toward avoiding canceled trains and signal problems. To spend $250 a month and have trains canceled for snow and other things is annoying.”

The new Penn Station will be 50 percent larger than the current one, and the new LIRR space will be wider, higher and brighter. Additionally, a new concourse will connect the station to Moynihan Train Hall, spanning all LIRR tracks along Eighth Avenue. Nine tracks and 17 platforms will be accessible from the Train Hall.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will also redesign both LIRR-connected subway stations, the A,C,E and 1,2,3 at 34th Street.

“It would be good to have more places to buy tickets,” said Gabriel Ruiz, 33, who works in construction all over Nassau County but lives in Richmond Hill, Queens. “It’s terrible sometimes. Penn Station gets really crowded. There are people all over the place and sitting on the floor. The situation is crazy.”

Ruiz, who said he has commuted every day for the past two years, cautioned that bringing new shops to the station might not be a great idea. “They have too much stuff there already,” he said.

The project has been the subject of several delays because of earlier design flaws. Now, however, state officials insist that they are ready to move ahead with construction.

In fact, the project’s first phase, the creation of a concourse west of Eighth Avenue, is nearing completion. The concourse will provide direct access to LIRR and Amtrak tracks and will connect the Moynihan Train Hall to Penn Station underground via 33rd Street.

“Penn Station is certainly due for some renovations,” said Kim Amato, 23, of Northport. “Not just due to the amount of commuters who come from Long Island, but also because of all the subway foot traffic.”

Related Companies, Vornado and Skan-ska have guaranteed the completion of Penn Station’s redevelopment on time, and as part of the agreement, they will pay the state a total of $600 million for the right to develop the Farley building, which will include shops and offices from which they will derive rental income. 

Empire State Development, the state’s economic development agency, will put $570 million into the project, and $425 million will come from the LIRR, Amtrak, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the federal government.

The MTA would be responsible for $220 million in renovation to the subways and the LIRR, an amount that has MTA board members concerned, because the agency has already committed to spending $30 billion on rebuilding 30 New York City subway stations and providing Wi-Fi and cellphone service at more than 140 underground stations and USB connections on subways and buses. Work on the majority of the subway stations should be completed by 2018, with the remainder finished by 2020. Cuomo has also asked the MTA to build a new third track for the LIRR main line between Floral Park and Hicksville, at a cost of $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

“New York’s tomorrow depends on what we do today, and the new Moynihan Train Hall will be a world-class, 21st-century transportation hub,” Cuomo said. “With more than twice the passengers of JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports combined, the current Penn Station is overcrowded, decrepit and claustrophobic. This is not a plan. This is what’s going to happen. People are going to walk through this station and recognize that this is New York.”