Through-Running

| The Global Standard vs. Penn Station
Global standard
Holdouts
🟢 Through-running regional rail
🔴 Terminal / disjointed holdout
※ Funding values in USD (2025 adj.)
🚨 NY Penn Station: A Disjointed Terminal System
3siloed agencies share
the same platforms
24max trains/hour on
century-old tunnels
0through-running pairs
currently operating
$17Bproposed expansion
that isn’t needed
The Core Issues Explained ▸
  • Isolated Commuter Networks vs. A Unified Regional System: While Amtrak operates intercity trains entirely through Penn Station, NJ Transit and the LIRR currently operate as fully isolated commuter systems—no commuter train runs through from New Jersey to Long Island in revenue service. The ReThinkNYC Regional Unified Network (RUN) plan proposes converting Penn Station to a fully through-running facility. By pairing NJ Transit with LIRR and Metro-North, trains would run continuously through Manhattan, unlocking massive system capacity without the need to demolish a Midtown block for a $7B+ station expansion.
  • The “1,000 Column” Structural Strawman: To dismiss through-running and justify expanding the station’s footprint, the 2024 Feasibility Study and critics (such as the RPA) have intentionally conflated two distinctly different design concepts. They frequently cite the structural impossibility of “Alternative 2, Concept 1” (a massive, full-station reconstruction requiring the removal or transfer of over 1,000 structural columns). In reality, the ReThinkNYC proposal—officially evaluated as “Alternative 2, Concept 2″—achieves wide platforms simply by decking over alternating tracks. This concept actually affects only 142 columns, making it highly constructible and far less disruptive than officially portrayed.
  • The Inefficiency of “Penn South” (Capped at 19 TPH): The core of Amtrak’s Gateway Program relies on building “Penn South” as a new stub-end terminal. However, Amtrak’s own 2015 “Penn South | Penn Station Integration” Technical Memorandum revealed that an 8-track stub-end configuration would yield a dismal capacity of just 19 trains per hour (TPH). This severe bottleneck is the direct mathematical result of the 22-minute turnaround times required for trains to reverse direction, proving that building a new terminal merely replicates the station’s existing inefficiencies at a multi-billion-dollar premium.
  • The “Missing” Simulations and FOIA Contradictions: The 2024 Feasibility Study artificially capped the capacity of through-running alternatives by citing “recent detailed rail operations simulations” to justify highly restrictive 15-to-22-minute dwell and turnaround times. Yet, in 2025 and 2026 FOIA responses, Amtrak’s Chief Legal Officer and FOIA Officer legally admitted that “no simulations were performed” and claimed no operational models exist in their possession. This directly contradicts their own 2015 Technical Memorandum, which explicitly stated that the 19 TPH Penn South capacity calculations were “verified with network simulation.” Amtrak has either possessed these simulation models for a decade and is illegally withholding them, or it falsely cited non-existent models in 2024 to mathematically doom the through-running alternatives.
  • Eliminating Wasted Capacity from Deadheading: Currently, Penn Station relies heavily on “drop-and-go” operations, where trains drop off commuters and then drive empty into storage yards. According to the agencies’ own 2021 data, this practice results in 111 empty “ghost trains” taking up highly coveted tunnel and station slots every single weekday during peak rush hours.

    At an average capacity of 1,200 people per train, that represents over 133,000 wasted passenger seats per day. To put that magnitude in perspective, opening those empty ghost trains to paying passengers would provide enough capacity to:
    • Take the equivalent of over 2,600 fully loaded commuter buses out of the Lincoln Tunnel and off Midtown streets every day.
    • Fill Madison Square Garden more than six times over (based on maximum concert capacity), or sell out nearly seven Knicks games back-to-back.
    • Remove over 100,000 cars from the region’s congested bridges, tunnels, and highways.
    The ReThinkNYC RUN plan eliminates this massive waste by moving terminal functions to new, multi-modal hubs at the edges of the urban core (Secaucus Junction and Port Morris). This allows trains to run entirely through Manhattan in continuous revenue service, ensuring that every train moving through the region’s most critical bottlenecks is actually carrying paying passengers.
What Through-Running Would Change ▸
  • Pairing NJ Transit with LIRR services would allow trains to run continuously from New Jersey through Manhattan and onto Long Island — eliminating reversals and freeing up 30–40% more platform capacity.
  • The existing station footprint could handle up to 48 trains/hour under through-running — the same target as the $17B Gateway expansion, at a fraction of the cost.
  • Commuters gain one-seat rides across the tri-state region; the current forced transfer at Penn Station is eliminated.
  • Non-revenue yard moves are eliminated or drastically reduced, cutting operating costs and track consumption.
  • Peak dwell times drop from 15+ minutes to the 1–2 minutes typical of through-running systems like Munich and Paris.
  • The model already exists globally: Philadelphia’s CCCC (1984), Munich’s Stammstrecke (1972), and Paris’s RER (1977) all prove the formula.
The Governance Trap Explained ▸

Penn Station is technically a through-station: Hudson River tunnels enter from the west and East River tunnels exit to Long Island. The infrastructure for through-running already exists. The barrier is institutional. Amtrak, NJ Transit, and the MTA/LIRR each maintain separate ticketing, rolling stock, crew agreements, and operating rules. No agency has authority to compel the others to through-run. A unified regional rail authority — modeled on the interoperability agreements that underpin Tokyo’s 60+ through-service arrangements — is the prerequisite, not more concrete.

The 2024 Feasibility Study & FOIA Revelations ▸

The 2024 Feasibility Study concluded that through-running was insufficient due to a rigid 15-minute dwell time requirement for turning trains (a significant increase from the 7-minute policy in the 2021 White Paper). The report explicitly claimed this metric was derived from “recent detailed rail operations simulations.”

However, 2025 and 2026 FOIA responses from Amtrak completely contradict this foundational claim. Amtrak legally admitted they possess “no native files, operational models (because no simulations were performed) or calculation workbooks,” and that the true parameters were instead “based on publicly available data.”

While shielding 16 drafts of the study from public view using the deliberative process privilege (Exemption 5), Amtrak was forced to admit on the record that the rigorous mathematical modeling cited to justify a $17 billion terminal expansion simply does not exist.

The ReThinkNYC ‘RUN’ Plan ▸

The Regional Unified Network (RUN), proposed by ReThink Studio, offers a comprehensive alternative to Amtrak’s Gateway Program. It transforms the region’s disconnected, terminal-centric transit systems into a unified, through-running network, following precedents set by Philadelphia, Paris, and London (“From Anywhere… To Everywhere”).

  • Eliminate Penn South: Opposes the $17B demolition of a Midtown block for new dead-end tracks. Instead, reallocates funds to widen existing Penn Station platforms, triple vertical circulation, and construct a purely through-running core.
  • Four Transit Hubs: Distributes terminal functions across a regional network: an expanded Secaucus Junction (NJ), Penn Station (Manhattan), a new Sunnyside Station (Queens), and a new Port Morris Station (Bronx).
  • Universal Rolling Stock: Mandates that LIRR, Metro-North, and NJ Transit procure new trains capable of operating natively across all three systems’ power specifications.

RUN demonstrates that by expanding the region’s core (rather than just providing access to it), New York can achieve 56 peak trains per hour on the existing footprint while spurring immense regional economic growth.

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💡 Suggested: Penn vs. Munich, Paris, Philadelphia
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