Thanks for the link, an interesting read. The politics involved in American railroads make our privatised system seem a model of efficiency. Just hope the tunnels don’t collapse the next time I’m visiting.
There is more truth to that statement than you know.
On to Pennsylvania Station.
The author does a good job in describing the two issues, the station itself and the tunnels.
The Pennsylvania Railroad warned for 10 years before the demolition of the surface structure that time was short. PRR was required to run money losing commuter trains and rates capped by government, and taxed up to the eyeballs for the incredibly valuable station used to support that service by the same government. Although not solely responsible, it was a significant contributor to the subsequent PC bankruptcy.
The station you see today was quite adequate for the time. This was the mid 1960's, it was assumed Northeast intercity service would continue its decline helped along by a government that took the mail from the passenger trains and gave it to the airlines. This was also the glory day of the Eastern Airlines shuttle to Washington and Boston. Government also planned that all airport access would be exclusively by highways designed to prohibit rail access. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed to implement the plan. Commuter service was also dying a slow death, so who would ever need a bigger station?
The author is correct, in hindsight all the assumptions were wrong. Commuter service vastly increased and intercity in the northeast came back thanks to absurd airport access, the security nightmare, and yes, new trains also paid for by goverment , as a last resort.
Where the author pursues a political agenda is the attack on Christie over the ARC tunnel proposal. Those tunnels would not access Penn Station, but terminate near a department store basement. Not to mention they would have stuck some of the commuter trains and Amtrak in the same old tunnels. Railroad people were horrified at billions spent to not fix the problem. Christie was right and later supported the new tunnels to Penn Station.
I could write more about the current drama, but think I will stop. This is already too long.
I worked for the PRR and lived through the table setting for this fiasco.
