The 1963 plan to run trains through Penn Station

On May 19, 1963, months before Pennsylvania Station was demolished, the New York Sunday News ran a story on page 16C headlined “Tunnel Under Park Ave. Urged to Link All Rail Lines.” It described a plan to join the region’s commuter railroads into one system through Manhattan. The full article is transcribed below.

What Bingham proposed

Sidney H. Bingham, a railroad consultant and former head of New York’s subway system, proposed a tunnel under Park Avenue connecting the lower-level tracks of Grand Central Terminal with the Pennsylvania and Long Island tracks under 32nd and 33rd Streets. That link would join the four major commuter lines entering the city into what he called “a single continuous transportation system,” serving riders from Long Island, Westchester, Fairfield County, and Union and Middlesex Counties.

He put construction at $138 million, roughly $1.4 billion in 2025 dollars. With new cars ($148.2 million) and possible railroad easements ($345 million), the article’s total came to $631.2 million. His case was the same one transit advocates make now: an integrated rail network is the alternative to building ever more highway capacity for cars.

Sixty years of the opposite

The plan described new stations to relieve crowding at Penn Station and Grand Central, links to the region’s airports, and the base of a regional rail system. Regional leaders instead kept the railroads separate and expanded capacity by building more terminal space. The Gateway Program’s plan for “Penn Station South,” a terminal annex south of the existing station, follows the same approach: it adds dead-end tracks rather than fixing the dead-end layout that limits the station.

The Train to the Game

Railroad officials have long cited technical, operational, and political obstacles to running trains through Penn Station. For eight NFL seasons, from 2009 through the 2016 season (its last game was January 1, 2017), the railroads ran such a service anyway: the Train to the Game, from Connecticut to the Meadowlands through Penn Station.

The trains started on Metro-North’s New Haven Line, switched to Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line at New Rochelle, crossed the Hell Gate Bridge through the Bronx and Queens, stopped at Penn Station for a crew change, and continued through the North River Tunnels to Secaucus Junction. Passengers rode on one ticket across three states, three railroads, and more than one electrical system.

The operation was complex. NJ Transit’s dual-voltage trainsets ran under incompatible power systems. Crews changed at Penn Station in timed ten-minute transfers. Metro-North crews were trained on NJ Transit equipment, and written agreements covered everything from equipment leasing costs to dwell times.

In its first season, 2009, the service ran three trains in each direction for nine games, carried 5,826 passengers, and earned $67,727. The most popular train arrived 90 minutes before kickoff. After 2009 it was cut to one train in each direction, and it continued for seven more seasons. It declined with that reduced frequency and with competition from driving, not because of a technical failure. The lesson is that through-running needs sustained commitment and enough service to compete with how people already travel.

Why it matters now

The through-running solution was documented in 1963 and demonstrated for eight NFL seasons, 2009 through 2016. Officials who call regional integration impossible have operated it. The question is why Penn Station’s weekday riders, more than 600,000 of them as of 2017, should get less than the football crowds did.

The 1963 article

The article is transcribed as printed, with its map and diagram.

Page 16C Sunday News May 19, 1963

Tunnel Under Park Ave. Urged to Link All Rail Lines

By NEAL PATTERSON

A new proposal to meet New York's tristate metropolitan area's tightening commuter problem by integrating a network of existing rail lines to serve commuter and suburban travel needs was advanced yesterday.

Sidney H. Bingham, railroad consultant and former boss of New York's subways, offered the plan to governors of the three states, city officials and railroad executives.

It's the only way, he suggested, to beat the ever-increasing clogging of highways by autos, with their insatiable need for more and more highway construction.

A New Rail Link

A key feature of Bingham's plan—which goes far beyond a previous one he put forward three years ago—is the construction of a tunnel under Park Ave. to connect lower level trackage of Grand Central Terminal with the Pennsylvania Long Island tracks under 32d and 33d.

That connection, Bingham pointed out, would make possible the linkage into an integrated network of the four major commuting lines entering New York City—the New York Central, New Haven, Pennsylvania and Long Island.

He envisioned it as making possible "a single continuous transportation system" for riders from Long Island and Westchester in New York, Fairfield County in Connecticut and Union and Middlesex Counties in New Jersey.

As extensions of electrification are made, the transportation services would be expanded later to additional wide areas. Some of the railway long lines also could be combined into the system, Bingham said, and the direct route between Washington and Boston would offer substantial savings in money and time.

"It could also be an economic factor," he stated, "in making available a comprehensive system of fast transportation to and between the airports in the greater metropolitan area."

The tunnel link between Grand Central and Penn Station, he noted, would make possible the provision of stations at 23d St. and Park Ave. South and at 59th St. and Park Ave. Congestion in Penn Station and Grand Central would be lightened, due to passengers continuing on to these new stations, Bingham declared.

Total Cost $631 Million

He estimated construction costs at $138 million, but pointed out this is "but a fraction of the investment which would be necessary to provide, by other methods, a comparable public service."

New cars would cost an estimated $148.2 million more. Bingham placed the expense of possible railroad easements at an additional $345 million if the integrated system is to be operated by an independent company. Total $631.2 million.

Further steps, not included in his initial cost figures, might include establishment of facilities at Marian Transfer, in New Jersey, to provide connections for the Erie-Lackawanna and Jersey Central with the Pennsylvania; electrification of the Long Island to Hicksville and Bethpage; and extension of the New York Central's Harlem Division electrification from North White Plains to Pleasantville.

Bingham pointed out that approximately 16 million persons, or one-tenth of the nation's population, live in the tri-state metropolitan area and that estimates are another 6 million will be added by 1965.