As the MTA chair and the man leading the project trade political adjectives, commuters confirm they will wait, as they have for six decades, on a platform with no signal
The Penn Station rebuild has entered a new phase of the project’s long and glorious history, which is the phase in which everyone involved stops talking about concrete and starts talking about each other. The MTA chair has accused the man leading the rebuild of going ‘full MAGA’ after he praised the President’s leadership of the project, a remark that has instantly turned what was a drainage question into a seminar on political vocabulary.
The Penn Station Rebuild, Explained for People Who Have Given Up
To understand the Penn Station rebuild, one must first understand Penn Station, a place built beneath Madison Square Garden by people who evidently disliked the idea of daylight. Millions of New Yorkers pass through it every year, in the way a swimmer passes through a shipwreck. Its ceilings are low, its corridors are tight, and its signs have a quiet way of insisting that the train you are looking for does not exist.
There have been plans to fix it since before most of its commuters were born. Each plan has been grander than the last. Each has been presented with great ceremony, a model made of cardboard, and a rendering in which everyone is smiling and nobody is carrying a suitcase. Each has ended in a meeting.
Where the Money Is, Which Is Nowhere
The practical difficulty is that Congress has not approved funding for the project, and observers are now saying that its future could be determined by the midterm elections, a thought that makes engineers gasp and election analysts sell tickets. Some New York lawmakers believe a change in control of the House might finally unlock the money. Others believe the money is in the same place as the Brooklyn Bridge sale proceeds, in a drawer with the portrait of a mayor nobody can name.
‘A rebuild of this scale,’ said Cornelius Ashworth-Delgado, a senior fellow at the Center for Infrastructure Hopes, ‘needs three things: money, a plan and a shovel. We have a plan. We have a shovel. We have a very good relationship with the shovel. But the money is a complicated guest.’
A Short Glossary of Terms Used at Penn Station Meetings
‘Phased’ means delayed. ‘Stakeholder’ means someone who can sue. ‘Transformational’ means it will cost more than the budget. ‘Committed’ means someone said it once in a room with a good microphone. And ‘on track’ is the funniest phrase in the English language, since there is no track at Penn Station that stays free for longer than ten minutes.
Why the Penn Station Rebuild Attracts So Much Politics
The row between the two men at the centre is, on a close reading, less about the project than about the sacred principle that no major piece of public work in America may proceed without somebody feeling slightly insulted. The adjectives have flown thick and fast. A source close to the discussions said the argument had been confined to the level of tone, with neither side contesting a single fact about the platforms, which remain universally regarded as a matter beyond human intervention.
It is a pattern that British readers will recognise. London’s own station dramas follow the same arc: a bold announcement, a stirring apology, and a government that confirms the situation is under review, which officials explain is British for ‘we are thinking about thinking’. Passengers there have long since learned to treat each announcement as a weather report. The rail companies themselves have turned the task into an art form, and their long-running correspondence of regret is summed up in a single memorable notice that the rail companies apologise for disruption.
What Commuters Want, Which Is Not Much
Ask a New Jersey commuter what they want from a rebuilt Penn Station and the answer is stirringly modest. They would like a ceiling that does not look like a punishment. They would like to find the right platform before the train leaves. They would like a bench, but a bench with a sense of itself. Some would like to be told, politely, what is going on, as the more privileged stations of Europe do, with a screen and a human voice.
‘I just want to know where the train is,’ said a woman in a long grey coat who has been commuting through the station for twenty-two years and who has, by her own estimate, lost eleven months of her life to the main concourse. ‘I do not need it to be beautiful. I need it to not be an escape room.’
The Comparison Nobody in Authority Wants to Make
Across the Atlantic, a vast and proud terminal such as London’s Waterloo Station has for generations managed to be loved and loathed in equal measure, and it has, in an almost scientific way, achieved a balance of confusion and charm. Penn Station has achieved only the confusion. A rebuild, planners say, is meant to add the charm, though they concede that charm is not a line item.
The proposed design includes natural light, a concept described in the draft as ‘an experiment’, and wide halls, a concept described as ‘a risk’. An early model of the new concourse, shown to a focus group of regular travellers, reportedly caused two of them to weep and a third to ask where the pillar had gone.
What Happens Next for the Penn Station Rebuild
The next steps are expected to be as clear as the station itself. The MTA will issue a statement. The man leading the rebuild will issue a counter-statement. A Congressional committee will consider whether to issue a statement of its own, and will then issue a report on the possibility of having issued one. Meanwhile, in a small sandwich shop beneath the arrivals board, a man who has worked the same counter since 1994 continues to sell exactly the same sandwich to exactly the same customers and has, quietly, become the only reliable institution in the building.
For readers who prefer their political theatre explained with some historical context, our guide to political satire in the United Kingdom offers a suitably long perspective on the wisdom of public feuds. As the midterms approach, one thing is certain: the Penn Station rebuild will continue, in the grand tradition of American infrastructure, to be about to start. For more reports on stubborn public institutions, see the Daily Squib, and this dispatch is presented by Bohiney Magazine in partnership with The London Prat.
SOURCE: bohiney.com