"Presidents do not often appear at news conferences about train stations. But Penn Station, in Midtown Manhattan, was the busiest transportation hub in North America, and Mr. Clinton had made public transit a priority. He and Gov. George E. Pataki posed beside a miniature model of a grand new train hall, while Senator Daniel P. Moynihan extolled its future grandeur."
"It remains the busiest transit hub in the United States, with nearly double the number of daily passengers as the busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. Much of the Eastern Seaboard might grind to a halt without it. It is also widely abhorred. Passengers descend into a gloomy, dimly lit warren of overcrowded concourses, much of it layered in grime and corroded by decay, sitting above an array of subterranean tracks whose age creates regular snarls and delays."
In 1999 national and state leaders announced plans to transform the area around New York's Pennsylvania Station into a modern gateway. More than 25 years and multiple administrations later, the plan to rebuild Penn Station remains far from complete. About 600,000 people pass through the station daily, making it the busiest transit hub in the United States and essential to the Eastern Seaboard. The station's concourses are gloomy, dimly lit, overcrowded and corroded by decay, while aging subterranean tracks cause frequent snarls and delays that cost New York millions in lost productivity. Politics and government inertia repeatedly impede large-scale progress, and many improvement proposals have been floated and shelved, with the Farley Building conversion into Moynihan Hall as a rare exception.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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