What replaced it is a building whose above-ground attributes are undistinguished and whose below-ground attributes are cramped and dingy. Then in the 1960s, as the American passenger rail industry was collapsing, and investment in America’s cities was simultaneously collapsing, and there was also a big fad for misguided urban renewal efforts, the station got torn down. If you check out Newark Penn Station or Baltimore Penn Station, you see that this was really how they did things, and naturally, the New York City station was a bigger deal than those two. That’s how people built train stations in the heyday of American railroading, and the Pennsylvania Railroad in particular built very distinguished stations. To understand this misbegotten project, I think you have to go back to the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century, Penn Station was this really cool, grand-looking building. But what’s really striking about Moynihan is that as best I can tell, local elites think it’s a huge success! The sad story of Penn Station But a place that really does have infrastructure needs shouldn’t be blowing huge sums of money on projects that don’t accomplish anything. Which would be fine, I guess, if New York City had no infrastructure needs. It just looks a lot nicer than the old place to wait for trains. With Moynihan Train Hall, we spent $1.6 billion on a new train station that has zero functional attributes. This is fine if you’re rich and you’re spending your own money, but the government should try to meet people’s actual transportation needs. You’re just paying extra because it looks cool. And the reality is it chills your food to the exact same temperature as a normal fridge. The Subzero name sort of implies extraordinary performance in terms of making things unusually cold, but unless you’re storing mRNA vaccines, that’s not actually something you would want. But in my experience, said fridge had exactly zero functional advantages over a normal fridge.įridges really don’t have a lot of performance characteristics they either keep the food cold or they don’t. I have no reason to believe that the flipper who did the renovation overpaid for the fridge, at least in the sense that they didn’t pay more than anyone else would pay for a luxury fridge. One is the unit costs - is the amount you spent reasonable given the nature of the thing you decided to do? But the other is the scope of the projects that you decide to do - did you actually need to do the stuff that you did? I used to live in a house with a Subzero fridge. What I’ve come to see after reporting on this subject for years is that when it comes to civil engineering project costs, you really need to consider two separate issues. It has salads and snack bowls along with sandwiches.Big civil engineering projects in the United States cost more than they do in most other developed countries, and this is especially true in the Greater New York City area and especially true of projects related to rail.Īnd last weekend, I went to my hometown of New York City for the first time since a (retrospectively poorly timed) visit in early March of 2020 and got to see one particularly vivid example of the kind of problems we have in this field - the new Moynihan Trail Hall at Penn Station. For a fresh sandwich, head to Pret A Manger. It's located in the plaza concourse level and is open from 7:00 a.m. If you're in the mood for sushi Wasabi Sushi & Bento prepares high quality snacks to go.Don't leave without getting a milkshake and fries to go. If you're in a hurry you can even download the Shake Shack app and order ahead of time. It's located in the lower concourse at Penn Station. For one of the best burgers in the city look no further than Shake Shack.There is a delicious cocktail and wine bar to make your travel day even more enjoyable. Vendors serve craft tacos, pizzas, salads, sliders, even sushi. One of Penn Station's newest and best additions is The Pennsy NYC, a high-class food hall located on top of the station.
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