Four fixes inside Penn Station make room for a third more trains

The station sits under four blocks of Midtown

Penn Station’s 21 tracks and 11 platforms lie below the street between 31st and 33rd Streets, from Seventh Avenue to west of Ninth. Madison Square Garden, PENN 2, Moynihan Train Hall, and the Manhattan West towers stand on top of them.

More than 350,000 people pass through on a weekday, aboard more than 1,000 train movements. NJ Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, and Amtrak share a layout drawn in 1910, and Metro-North is on its way as a fourth tenant.

24trains per hour per direction cross the Hudson into Penn at the peak today

Six tubes feed 21 tracks

With the buildings lifted off, the track level shows. Two single-track North River tubes carry every train from New Jersey and top out near 24 an hour in the peak direction. Four East River tubes feed the east end. One Empire Connection track brings trains down the West Side from Albany.

Tracks 1 through 4 dead-end under Seventh Avenue, so every train on them has to reverse. Only Tracks 5 to 21 carry the third rail LIRR trains run on, so LIRR cannot use Tracks 1 to 4. Tracks 20 and 21 reach west only to West Side Yard.

1,000+columns hold up the buildings above and fix the track layout in place, the report finds, which is why Phase I works inside it

A train that ends here holds its platform for 22 minutes

Most NJ Transit trains terminate at Penn. Each one unloads, swaps its crew, boards a new load, runs a brake test, and heads back west. NJ Transit schedules 22 minutes for the shortest turn. The timers show each parked train counting down.

Boarding cannot start until the arriving crowd has cleared the platform and the new crew is aboard. Commuter and Amtrak dwells at Penn run more than three times longer than at its closest international peer.

Every turning train crosses the ones behind it

West of the platforms, trains from New Jersey pass through A Interlocking, a web of switches. A train arriving to turn and a train leaving after its turn often need the same piece of track, so one waits. Empire trains and empty trains bound for the yards cut across the same web. Red marks show where routes cross in this model.

The switches are short, so trains move at 15 mph at most. After each move, A Interlocking’s compressed-air switch machines take about 24 seconds to reset.

113conflicting moves at A Interlocking between 8 and 9 in the morning, by FRA’s count

The new tunnel doubles the pipe. The station does not grow.

The Hudson Tunnel Project, due around 2035, and rehabilitation of the 1910 tubes, due in 2038, could double trans-Hudson capacity from 24 to as many as 48 trains per hour per direction. The new tubes’ leads are lit in gold.

The report’s finding: once those investments are done, Penn Station itself, its tracks, platforms, stairs, and operating habits, becomes the binding constraint. Without changes inside, the new tunnel’s capacity goes underused.

24 → 48theoretical trans-Hudson capacity once both tunnel pairs run

First fix: give each tunnel its own tracks

FRA calls this interlocking deconfliction. The new Hudson tubes feed Tracks 1 to 4, a dead-end station just for NJ Transit trains that turn back; Empire trains keep Tracks 5 and 6. The old North River tubes line up with the middle tracks and run straight through to East River Lines 1 and 2. East River Lines 3 and 4 serve the north tracks, which run through to West Side Yard.

A delay now tends to stay inside one zone instead of rippling across the station. The model is running the Phase I morning plan, with the new tubes open.

113 → 51conflicting moves at A Interlocking, a 55 percent drop

Second fix: more ways off the platform

A train cannot leave until its riders clear the platform, and the stairs and escalators meter how fast that happens. Phase I adds up to 23 of them, 19 stairs and 4 escalators, at least one per platform, marked in blue where FRA’s Figure 11 places them. It extends Platforms 1, 2, and 3 west by 200 to 350 feet, shown in gold.

Penn’s platforms run 17 to 23 feet wide, except LIRR’s 44-foot Platform 10; FRA’s peer stations give riders about 39 feet at Utrecht Centraal and 33 at London Waterloo. FRA’s crowd model needed 11.4 minutes for the passenger exchange with today’s stairs and 9 with the added ones, which lets Phase I schedule the turn in 18.

−2.4 minaverage platform clearing and boarding time, a 28 percent cut

Third fix: let some trains keep going

A through train unloads and loads at the same time and leaves in the direction it was already heading. There is no crew walk to the other cab and no reversing move back across the interlocking. Penn already runs this way for Amtrak.

Phase I adds four regional commuter trains per hour through the station in each direction, on top of four Amtrak through trains. Their paths are drawn in gold, tunnel to tunnel, with arrows moving the way the trains do. The red paths belong to trains that end here: in from the new Hudson tubes to Tracks 1 to 4, and back out the same way.

4 + 4commuter and Amtrak through trains per hour, each direction, in Phase I

Fourth fix: one plan for the whole station

LIRR is the only Penn operator that plans every train’s track, length, and next departure in a Terminal Operating Plan. It posts 97 percent on-time performance. Amtrak ran 76 percent on time on the Northeast Corridor in 2025; NJ Transit’s Northeast Corridor Line ran 81 percent in January 2026.

The study calls for one plan covering the whole station and a standard train-start routine so trains move within seconds of getting the signal.

97%LIRR on-time performance with a Terminal Operating Plan, February 2026

The four fixes carry a third more trains. Going higher depends on the trains arriving on time.

Together they lift the peak from 24 trains per hour per direction to 32 in the morning and 30 in the evening, inside the existing station. That is up to a third of the added capacity the earlier $16.7 billion expansion project promised, at a fraction of its cost.

Phase I tested only what fits inside the station walls. In FRA’s delay simulation, 32 trains an hour ran slightly worse than today and 30 slightly better. A plan with six Amtrak trains an hour fit the timetable but failed once late arrivals entered, so the final plans hold Amtrak to four. The report says going above 32 depends on how punctually trains arrive from across the region.

+33%peak trains through the same station in the morning, before Phase II tests what lies outside it

A second package failed its stress test

Penn Station Future merges Platforms 5 and 6 into one super-wide platform, gives up Tracks 10 and 11, and doubles commuter through-running to eight trains per hour each way at the same 32-train total. The timetable fit on paper. FRA’s dynamic simulation failed once late arrivals and congestion at LIRR’s West Side Yard entered, and FRA sent the package to Phase II.

In this model the package carries 26 or 27 of its 32 trains an hour from New Jersey even with every train on time. Here each train also arrives up to 2.5 minutes late at random, and trains held outside the station are flagged at the tunnel mouths.

8commuter through trains per hour each way, deferred to Phase II

The developer wants to extend east, not west

Amtrak picked Penn Transformation Partners as master developer after Phase I closed. FRA’s July Addendum records the team’s alternative to the westward extensions: push Platforms 1 and 2 up to 450 feet east beneath Seventh Avenue and the 1, 2, and 3 subway, ending in the sub-basement of the PENN 11 building. The extension is drawn in teal, through the street and the building above it.

FRA writes that going east may disrupt the station less during construction and match or beat the westward plan’s benefits. A 2021 master plan white paper places a Con Edison substation in PENN 11’s basement, where the extension would end.

450 ftthe longest eastward stretch for Platforms 1 and 2 in the developer’s concept

Phase I stopped at the station walls. Phase II goes past them.

Phase II, due in 2028, leaves the station walls and studies the Metro-North, LIRR, and NJ Transit service areas: arrival reliability, junctions, yards, train fleets, labor, and who runs the station.

The model keeps running. Switch the service plan, change its speed, put the buildings back, or select a train to read what it is doing.