Moynihan Station lives

Write it down, in pen this time and chisel it in granite: Moynihan Station is happening. It’s really happening. When Pat Moynihan, our great thinker and U.S. senator, long ago proposed redeeming the historic sin of tearing down Penn Station by turning its twin across Eighth Ave., the largely empty Farley General Post Office, into a train depot, we were ecstatic.

The master architects of McKim, Mead and White built the majestic Penn in 1910 and the matching Beaux-Arts post office in 1913. And while stupidity and avarice in the 1960s cost us Penn, dooming travelers to a dreary cellar, as Moynihan told us: We had a second chance.

But for more than two decades, there has only been talk and disappointment as plans rose and fell and Presidents, governors and mayors came and went.

Amtrak was in and then was out, and then NJ Transit was in and then was out, and then Amtrak was back, and then the LIRR was in.

The crappy chorus repeated, like a bad song that your kids can’t get enough of.

Nothing concrete ever happened to the concrete. Even having President Bill Clinton speak at the 1999 unveiling on Farley’s first floor produced nada. Moynihan’s jaunty call to “get the jackhammers going” was never heeded. He died in 2003.

But now, with Gov. Cuomo, the jackhammers are going. Full blast. We saw them and heard them. The enormous old mail sorting room floor, which covers an entire acre right behind the famous 24-hour postal lobby, is being taken apart and carted away at this moment.

Gone are the enclosed walkways that hung from the ceiling so supervisors and postal inspectors could watch unseen as mail was sorted (and not pilfered) below. A soaring roof will be glass.

That same first floor where Clinton stood 18 years ago is becoming the new Moynihan train hall, with cuts in the concrete to install escalators down to the platforms and tracks below.

Passengers can already feel the start of the transformation. The West End Concourse that opened last week enables Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and some NJ Transit riders to get on and off at the far Eighth Ave. side of the complex, tucked beneath Farley’s monumental stairs and columns.

It’s wide and clean, a dignified relief — albeit a year late — from the drudgery of Penn.

This is the preview. The feature film is due to be released in three years, having been stuck in development hell longer than almost anyone can remember.

But now all the papers have signed and all the funds are in place. The money has actually been wired. Cuomo pushed and pushed; good for him.

While Moynihan’s construction goes forward, there is other work to do. Due to foolish planning by NJ Transit, many of the cross-Hudson commuter line’s customers, those on trains using Tracks 1 to 4, cannot access the new West End Concourse and won’t be able to use Moynihan.

That must change. All of Penn’s tracks and platforms must connect to Moynihan. The blueprints are there; Cuomo should finish the job.

And when Moynihan is complete — the date to write, again in pen, is 2020 — Cuomo, as the Farley landlord, must refuse to let Amtrak move in unless they sign over the deed to Penn Station.

Then, Cuomo can set out to rehab along the Moynihan lines what he rightly calls the Penn “catacomb” into a modern train station for all the railroads and all the passengers who ride them.

The station will be a fine tribute, notwithstanding that Moynihan himself worried about having his name on a project that might never get built.

But built it will be, even a grand entryway extending all the way out to Ninth Ave., mirroring the long arcade from the original 1910 Penn Station. The senator would have liked that.