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In the end, you eat what's put in front of you. It's a little late to change your mind.

Every one of these projects is just a free handout to the consultant class while providing almost nothing to everyone in this city.

> Why did the MTA build a train station at the midway point between the Earth’s core and 42nd Street? Bureaucratic infighting. The LIRR and Metro North, which until today ran all trains to and from Grand Central, are both within the MTA. In theory, they should cooperate as part of the same organization.

How much power does the MTA President (CEO?) have over these agencies? Trying to understand whether the MTA head(s) have been weak or if they never had the power they needed to prevent this nonsense.

I never would have assumed that they built another train station underneath Grand Central. Instead I would have thought it was a very expensive extension. Reading that it’s so far underground, hard to find and takes forever to get street level, it makes laugh through the pain.

E train from Jamaica to Manhattan in 25 minutes? This author has obviously no idea what they are talking about.

They have been building a subway extension down the Van Wyck Expressway since the 1950's. Partial tunnel still there. Just depends on which new administration takes an interest in it.

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>It is difficult to throw $11 billion at a transit-dense region and not accomplish something at least by accident. But those benefits are outweighed by its astronomical cost and other ways to accomplish those same goals. It is impossible to regard East Side Access as anything other than a transit disaster.

I wonder if this author is biased at all.

What I will say I agree with is how long it takes to get from the terminal to the subway, but that's a problem Grand Central has already. I commute out of GC every day, and for awhile my train was on the lower level. It was really annoying to come all the way up from the subway, then back down again. This new terminal is just a more dramatic example. Ideally there would be a plan to connect the lower terminal directly with some subway platforms so you don't have to go through a rigamarole to transfer once you arrive, but that feels like another multi-billion dollar project in itself.

Yeah I feel like the amount of time it takes to get to street level definitely lessens the time saving impact

Closer to 32 minutes, assuming there’s no delays.

That’s what $11 billion gets you in New York

Absurdly small-minded hot take on why a huge new train station is irrelevant.

Especially when half the escalators will probably be broken/out of order for the majority of the time this station is in service.

Getting cross town after getting off of at Penn Station is a huge pain in the ass. Access to GCT via LIRR opens up a lot of alternate routes and connects LIRR to MNR and the respective subways that connect to GCT. It also means that the outer rims of Queens and much of Long Island will have better access to the eastern half of Midtown Manhattan.

>I wonder if this author is biased at all.

I mean, you want high praise for a project 14 years late and 7.5 billion over budget that provides minimal improvements in travel time mostly to out of city commuters? It's not a huge leap to see this project as the boondoggle it is.

I had to give up reading because I couldn’t find any factual information half way in.

right critiques are only permitted for things that haven't happened yet

All of the above.

It being partially open doesn't mean it's done.

They never consider the depth.

This is not a NYC problem exclusively.

My Métro station in Montreal is four escalators below ground, one of which is the second longest escalator in Canada.

Ottawa just finished the Rideau station, which after DC, has the longest escalator in North America.

It’s a single station with no shopping or arena at the top, and both are like 12 min to ground level.

It’s fucking ridiculous. And that’s just baby subway systems in Canada and they still fuck this up.

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I understand what you're saying but sometimes you have to be realistic about things.

No one wants to hear it, but we need a federal public transit agency with the authority directly create infrastructure without the approval of local jurisdictions and agencies. There’s so much waste and corruption in these projects.

It's Vice. There are no expectations of quality.

Article is stupid. We get more benefits from ESA than just redundancy and reliability. We get a ton more capacity to run commuter trains into Manhattan. The LIRR has scheduled way more trains to come in to the city, which doesn't just benefit people from far flung places, but also people who live off the LIRR in Queens. More transit is almost never a bad thing, even at the obscene price tag.

Not to mention, it's not like this is money that we spent and got nothing for it. This terminal is going to be in use for probably literally a couple/few hundred years. I know it's hard to see that far into the future, but the subway system itself is 118 years old, with Penn Station not far behind it, and Grand Central also not far behind Penn, and none of those things are going away in the near future. It's a lot of money to front today, and could've been cheaper, but we spent the money so future generations have a terminal too. It's worth every dime.

Well they had that "fact" about the 25 minute E train ride. That's where I gave up.

They also act as if at Jamacia and Atlantic Terminal you are magically whooshed from the LIRR to subway instead of having to walk a fair distance.

All of this is dumb. They went deep to not disturb existing infrastructure since that would add to cost. It’s not like it’s simple to tunnel 6 feet under existing track. It’s not like this was planned for. It’s literally under train platforms supporting fucking trains. Which is under a building/street. They needed to support everything on top. Going deep into bedrock naturally solves these problems.

Not to mention stations need to be level and strait, something that’s not easy with existing infrastructure and NYC’s sometimes slightly unstable sandy ground. This isn’t that far from the east river where they already had to be deep. Coming up doesn’t reduce complexity. It just adds new complexities.

If there had been a failure they’d just write the article “they could have simply gone deeper to avoid this tragedy”. That’s how lazy journalism has become.

That won’t necessarily solve the issue. Taking the politics to the national level can help some thing but hurt others. We have scores of M1 Abrams tanks sitting unused in fields because the manufacturer is great at lobbying congressmen to not put their people out of work.

You’d probably end up with modern, expensive, state of the art and unused transit projects in Kansas while the MTA gets little or nothing because that’s how congress often works.

Edit: grammar

Oh, fuck off with this article. The new station looks amazing, and I can now glide into midtown feeling like a human being instead of scurrying through Penn like a rat.

Those tanks are in the move currently.

I’m just looking at the UK’s public transit system and sighing wistfully.

I mean then you would get projects designed and executed by people with even less knowledge of the local community and its needs. I agree the red tape and beauracracy in NYC is ridiculous but I don't think a federal agency is the solution. This coming from someone who still believes the federal govt can do good things.

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They mention that the original LIRR tunnels to Penn haven't been repaired since Sandy, and then completely ignore the fact that worst comes to worst, now they could shut them down to repair them and still have LIRR service into Manhattan.

Who says they wouldn't be local people? The federal government already employs locally-focused community officials all over the country. They would just have the authority of the federal government.

It’s Vice. Weed and food are the only things they actually know about

They fucked over Brooklyn commuters with this shuttle service thats on track 12 of Jamaica and without timed connections

I think the other commenter raised a great point - a national transit agency is also susceptible to national politics, and then you risk transit dollars being diverted to where they're not needed. Also, the federal government can't just do whatever the hell it wants where it wants - they still have go through regulations, they might face lawsuits from state and local groups, they still have to contract companies to do the construction.

Transit options are nice and this one sure is pretty cool but not so cool when it is at a ridiculous cost.

NYC regional transport needs to be consolidated into one agency with a more transparent review process with less politics and more oversight.

If we want to continue to have nice things, we need to do so within reason and figure out how to pay for the stuff we already have.

These ridiculously expensive cost overruns are an outright embarrassment and need to stop. What will it take to get people in charge that can rein in costs?

I’ve seen the videos of how deep this station is but are these numbers accurate? He’s greatly complimented the E train speed so maybe he’s also embellishing the time to walk in/out the station at Madison. I’m actually trying to find a new place near an LIRR stop with east side access so just curious. Especially if it’s 5-10 minutes of walking in test trials, I can’t imagine a packed rush hour pace.

I got that reference!

Things like this are kind of funny to me. I grew up on the ues and now live there again. Pre the second avenue subway it would be easy to have looked and been like all that money and time for 4 stops. Total boondoggle. The reality is the 4/5/6 we’re awful in terms of crowding. The Q has made it much easier to get to different parts of the city easier and without extensive transfers. All the new stations are ada compliant. Pre pandemic o would have said that I definitely used the q to go places I would have taken a cab. It has definitely improved the lives of senior citizens who live around the stations. I look at gcm the same way. It may not feel like it’s going to make much of an impact, but it will reduce some crowding. Make access easier. And maybe just maybe it will convince some more of the nearly 3mm people who live on Long Island to take the train in instead of driving. Plus we should be building more transit options regardless. We should already be thinking about the next big projects that will make commuting into and getting around the city easier. And while we probably wont ever have a unified transit system. One that dovetails with each branch is multiple ways is certainly better

Sure, it's not an end all be all and I'm not even saying I'm on board with the idea necessarily. I'm just taking issue with the idea that it would be a bunch of bureaucrats in a far off place that wouldn't know what's going on.

I was like, I'm sure this author lives in Brooklyn - sure enough, they do. Doubt they've even been to Queens unless someone put a gun to their head.

From what I’ve seen a lot of the walking times are very conservative and not taking into account the pace that most seasoned commuters walk at.

> mostly to out of city commuters

How is this, in any way, a bad thing?

The author of this article has some legit points but should have avoided mentioning travel times. They are unaware of the cost, time and convenience people weigh before traveling. The LIRR is fast and clean, the subways are more frequent but not worth the hassle. I rather figure out the final portion of my travel within the city.

How about just regional transit authorities then? I'd be happy if we just considered the transit need to move around the region.

Totally a journalist that doesn't have a stick up his craw.

Also why the fuck is Vice still allowed to function??

I can’t wait to visit the new station. Costs aside I’m just so happy to see it finished!

No one will care about the price tag after a few years. The Boston big dig cost over $10billion in the 90s and now nobody cares about the cost anymore and only see how big of an improvement it was for the community and the city.

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Downvoting this vapid ridiculousness

Thats a nice looking bomb shelter.

Imagine taking part in that pitch meeting.

“Any new Santos lies?”

“Nah.”

“Want to keep beating the Justin Roiland dead horse?”

“Not today.”

“Hey, didja hear that new station at Grand Central for the LIRR finally opened? Wow, that took a long time.”

“Do you suppose you can gin up some phony outrage about that? Like how much money and shit? All for a Gen Z audience that won’t give two fucks, but will make us look like legit local news reporters?”

“I don’t see why not!”

“And make it overly lengthy, like you really went in on an investigation.”

That’s our little lord fuckleroy!

The author is trying to use the facts that the station took too long and cost too much to argue that it should never have been built at all, but that doesn't actually follow and it's really obvious to everyone who reads it. Are you the author?

There is a plan, but it is tied to the redevelopment of the Grand Hyatt next door. If it happens the lower level Metro North platforms and LIRR platforms would be directly connected to the subway station.

>Transit options are nice and this one sure is pretty cool but not so cool when it is at a ridiculous cost.

Completely agree with everything you said, but I will say that in a decade no one will care about these cost overruns.

End of day we should absolutely do what you said, but getting overly expensive infrastructure built is better than saving money and not building anything. Its sad that we're in the a state were its either or.....

As someone who has to travel thru Penn, I am very jealous. GCT is like 1000x better than Penn.....

>This terminal is going to be in use for probably literally a couple/few hundred years.

I mean, G-d willing, sure. But the odds are by then it will all be well underwater.

I would say in our case we need at the bare minimum a interstate agency solely dedicated to transit in our metropolitan area. We have like 5 agencies now serving NJ and NY and all act in their own self interests, instead of the interest of commuters and citizens. As others mentioned a federal agency isnt really ideal here.

A Northeast Corridor Transit Authority. You have my vote for Regional Train Daddy.

Cats too

It is scheduled for 26 minutes travel time to 53/Lex. E trains are scheduled to run every 4 minutes during rush hour.

It's a much shorter walk than the one from the deep new terminal to the surface.

There are 15 links in the article and factual information in the second paragraph

> then completely ignore the fact that worst comes to worst, now they could shut them down

That's literally the entire point of that paragraph :) Here's the whole thing:

> East Side Access does accomplish one important goal, providing redundancy and some reliability improvements for the LIRR into Manhattan. Before ESA, the LIRR only had one track pairing and terminus in Manhattan at Penn Station. Those tunnels still haven’t been fully repaired from Hurricane Sandy damage because it would have been too disruptive to LIRR service. Redundancy and operational flexibility are important for a railroad that moves hundreds of thousands of people per weekday, especially as we look to a future of more frequent and severe storms due to climate change.

That project was an enormous boondoggle and had so many issues that I would hope that there's a better takeaway than "no will care about the price eventually." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems

I guarantee you that the planning departments in Boston do not only see the positives of this project.

>…The E train goes from Jamaica to Lexington and 53rd Street in 25 minutes (😱)

As someone who rode that stretch for 2 years, i call 🤬 on this.

Remember when Vice was good?

Now they're desperately trying to sell themselves at 1/6th their peak valuation.

A very modern dialogue

"Why did nobody think of this! everyone is so stupid!!!"

Actually they did think about it and made the trade off to increase the cost of the project to not disturb street life

"Oh sure yeah that makes sense IDIOTS 🙄🙄🙄"

None of it is simple. But instead of dealing with infrastructure to support a shallower station during construction, we’ll be dealing with a station that takes ten minutes to get out of for centuries.

As someone who travels to New York a few times a year for work, having a direct line from Jamaica to GCT (that costs $5!) is a game changer. I’m personally super stoked about it.

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You’d have that anyway. It’s either going to be a long tunnel or an escalator. The amount of underground land off limits there do to various train lines and platforms is insane.

It would be like the passageway between 42nd street. A long crowded walk.

You’d also have to deal with modern safety standards. There’s not nearly enough exists on that thing by today’s standards. So you’d need to find ways for at least some emergency exists, build and buy some land for all that.

Still complicated, still expensive, not making things faster.

If this were an article about runaway transit costs and how planning and construction could change to reduce costs, that might be useful. They get completely lost in the weeds arguing about why the project wasn't useful -- that doesn't fly here where people actually use the thing.

Do you commute into/regularly travel through Manhattan? I can tell you that being able to access different subway lines as a direct transfer from LIRR, or direct between LIRR and MNR is useful. Absolutely, it should it have cost less and happened much sooner, but the article does very little to examine the why and how in detail.

Jamaica LIRR upstairs from the E what do you mean

baby brained is way too generous for this take

It’s also the fact that it’s a work commute for a lot of people going to the midtown east area. Saving 20 mins every morning if your commute is an hour is huge. Probably enough to win over some people who’d otherwise drive in.

In context it only cost as much as one year of the NYPD.

That aside, the rest of the criticisms seem very valid, no?

Also, there was a comment yesterday about the commute and the poster said it barely saved anytime over the train

What cross town options are there from GCT? The 7?

Shuttle train (S train) goes between GCT and Times Square frequently.

Comparing to the E train from Jamaica, who is going to get off at Jamaica and take the subway after paying the ridiculous LIRR fare?

You can tell when a writer has decided to smell their own farts before writing an article. The masturbatory language is so desperately injected before any kind of information that the readers should be able to digest without authors bullshit.

If the result of articles like this is to make people gun shy of building new transit, it's incredibly damaging. Even if the benefit per rider seems low (and it's not as low as they make it sound in this article) you have to aggregate over millions of people taking many millions of trips over many years. It's hard for transit projects to not be worth the cost, even if we're paying a lot more than we should be.

That said, I'd vote for a candidate on any level of government who was serious about getting infrastructure cost in this country, and this city in particular, under control. This project needed to get built but we could have so much more a lot faster if we didn't have the highest building costs in the world.

Sounds like it was written by someone who hasn't been on Earth long enough to understand. This is how the world works. Governments and municipalities do not operate like businesses. They're closer to military logistics than any corporate venture.

I don't agree with the article's extremely pessimistic tone. but they're right to raise the point that building this terminal 16 stories underground instead of figuring out a way to incorporate it into the massive already existing Grand Central was a terrible misallocation of billions of dollars.

"Grand Central station, the one we all know and love, has 43 passenger tracks on two levels and is one of the biggest train stations in the world in terms of track capacity."

Woodside transfer to the 7 express is much shorter too.

Amazing that now we are to imagine turning GCT into a construction site for 20 years to avoid some time on an escalator.

This article is short sighted.

It assumes people who ride the railroad would want to use the subway instead.

It wrongly states the average time a subway ride from Jamaica to Manhattan would be.

It ignores the fact that people want and deserve a one seat/single fare commute.

It ignores how the subway system would deal with that added ridership.

It ignores thousands of people not having to transfer to the subway, which can be at crush levels of ridership during rush hour.

It ignores the time savings for the people it is intended to serve.

I seem to be the only person who appreciates Penn Station, being able to know where the exits are and get from the train to out of the station in two minutes if need be. I hate that my line may send half of its trains across the city. That elevator ride at Grand Central makes the jaunt from Penn to the 1 to the S look like a cakewalk. Would this platform work for Amtrak service to points North of the city?

Such a bad headline. Why do Americans that have never left the country always think everything in other continents is better? Next time you're in the so beloved Paris, France, please do take public transport from CDG to the city. - Saw Grand Central Madison today and it's pristine, can't wait to ride it

Aaron Gordon is a well respected transit writer who has covered the subway for years. And I was skeptical of the speed too, but you can get between Lex and the end of the E in 29 minutes according to Google maps.

I think the issue is that to bring the new line to the same grade as the existing terminal would have required some other exceedingly expensive tunnel so the trains could wind their way up to the correct elevation. This is the same reason that the F train, which uses the same tunnel, has such deep stations under midtown east

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I’ve lived on the UES for 15 years and the time BQ(Before Q) and after are night and day. I went from a 45 mins or more commute to my midtown office to 25 mins. Not to mention all the connections I can now make. I love it. However as the article points out because urban residents are so starved for better public transportation infrastructure doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be criticisms of projects - especially 11 billion dollar ones that run 14 years over schedule. The article makes salient points and because the Q is an example of a good project doesn’t necessarily mean this one is.

Ok—What’s dumb about these type articles to me is that their assessment is essentially all qualitative. “Too expensive and won’t actually affect traffic.” Is the boiled down theme.

But this project had to undergo multiple Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) which included detailed traffic analyses by experts—Which concluded it would. Having worked on EISs—I tend to trust the individuals who model the traffic conditions for a living over the journalist shooting for extra clicks with a grabby title about how it won’t work based on their back of the envelope calcs.

That would be a big plus for this project then, I think.

To your point, how does the F train eventually end up at the 57 street station? I checked the depth and the 63rd street station is 155 feet deep but the 57 street stop is only 30.

How can the subway do it but not the LIRR? I’m sure there is a good answer someplace but genuinely curious.

Correctly said "wose comes to worst"

The E train from Jamaica to the east side is not 25 min. Plus you reduce crowding on the E train from Queens into the city for those going to the east side. The East side of Manhattan has always been a complicated connection from Penn Station. The article does not account for waiting for the transfers to other trains. It’s expensive and we should learn lessons. It’s also muted now that the everyday work force has dwindled. They need to connect Brooklyn and queens and the Bronx (outer boroughs) better.

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It’s possible but it’s really optimistic.

Coming from uptown you have to transfer to the R to Queens Plaza to get to the E. So you’re waiting for your downtown train, your transfer to the E, and then the E. When the trains are running its nice but delays are going to fuck you. Plus the E is admittedly very nice when its running express but at night when its local its a slog. You gotta wait like 20 minutes for a train and then you’re looking at an hour from that point to get to Penn Station. And then there’s been the problem w Jamaica station being shut down on the weekends/at night so you need to take a shuttle bus. There’s just a lot of variables that can drastically effect the time. So it can be 30 minutes and during peak times on weekdays it runs well enough (still not enough trains though lol) but speaking as someone who makes a daily commute from the Bronx to Jamaica the subway just really sucks getting you there consistently.

I think people are appreciative of transport improvements but cost is the issue. Why must we spend BILLIONS for 3.5 stations. I agree that SAS made a lot of journeys faster and better, there were also some operational improvements. While GCM has fewer improvements, the number of additional trains is minimal and some journeys will take longer.

We should spending more efficiently. There should be better value for money.

Thank you! Exactly. People in NY don’t know how good and how cheap they have it. You have a subway that literally stops every few blocks in Manhattan, is incredibly cheap compared to other systems, is one the most ridden in the world (~ 6.5 million people a day), had the world’s only 24/7 service and is relatively clean and safe.

Yes, Subway is the same. People always saying the Subways in Europe are better drive me nuts. In Paris it's literally a public restroom. I know that happens in NY too but absolutely not the same quantities. There is pickpockers in most subways in Europe, none in NYC. The ones in Europe are so much more expensive, not in NY. - People should compare first before they trash NY things.

In Tokyo the groping of women is such a problem that they had to introduce women into cars.