The new Penn
Celebrating Judy Garland’s 100th birthday Friday, TV showed several of her iconic films, including 1945’s “The Clock.” Based on a story by former Daily News sports editor Paul Gallico and the third of his four wives, it marvelously depicts the later-demolished original Penn Station. But being wartime, MGM didn’t shoot on location in New York, creating instead a true-to-life Penn replica on a Hollywood sound stage (except there’s never been a Track 22).
The film begins in Penn’s grand Main Waiting Room for Garland and love interest Robert Walker, with the final scene in the Concourse, complete with steel girders and glass brick flooring.
The vitality and majesty of the place and the wide-open areas are everything that the current narrow dungeon is not. For aiming to change that, we are quite pleased with Gov. Hochul’s plan to refit Penn, opening it up, most significantly by putting everything on a single level, as the Long Island Rail Road has long had. Foolishly, Amtrak is split on two floors and NJTransit is divided on three different levels.
As she said last week in her debate and told us directly, she’s into details, so we will be very specific. The single best improvement is the extension of the north/south Central Corridor, now covering Track 13 to Track 21, all the way down to Track 1 to improve vertical access to those NJT platforms. This should have happened 30 years ago.
The Central Corridor will also be substantially widened. Again, excellent, as is the transformation of the skinny and dingy Hilton Passageway into a broad and bright east/west conduit across the station’s 32nd St. midsection. Removing the unneeded upper level will double the concourse height. While not what Garland enjoyed, that’ll make for a much better environment. Indeed, why keep any back-ofhouse functions on either level? Clear it all out and install a concourse under 31st St.
Much more troubling, however, is a major flaw in the plans that must be fixed, lest Hochul’s project end up a failure like many past rehabs. Platforms for NJT’s Tracks 1 to 4 only can accommodate nine rail cars and must be lengthened to fit a dozen cars, like all LIRR platforms do. By year’s end, when East Side Access is complete, half the LIRR passengers will decamp to Grand Central, leaving NJT as Penn’s majority carrier. Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s constituents must no longer be treated as second-class. Lengthen platforms 1 to 4 and grant them entry to the splendid Moynihan Train Hall.