Long Island Rail Road riders expressed amazement at the new concourse under Eighth Avenue from America's busiest train station. It opened June 15 as the first phase of the new Moynihan Station.
LIRR riders could be forgiven for thinking they were not in midtown Manhattan heading home to Long Island when they entered the new concourse to Penn Station from the James Farley Post Office Building. Khorri Atkinson reports for The New York Times:
“I’m feeling like I’m in another country,” said Fiona Germain, who lives on Long Island, as she stood in the new Long Island Rail Road concourse inside the James A. Farley Post Office Building across the street from Pennsylvania Station. “When I travel to Europe, the stations are very clean. This kind of looks like it versus what we had, which was so beat-up and ugly.”
The new railroad concourse, which officially opened at 6 a.m. Thursday in the post office building on the intersection of Eighth Avenue and West 33rd Street [sic]* is the first phase of the Moynihan Station, which is scheduled to be completed by December 2020. The train hall will eventually also serve Amtrak riders.
It was back to reality when commuters entered the station and boarded their trains.....they were still in N.Y.
If Moynihan Station, technically called Moynihan Train Hall according to the official unveiling of plans by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) last September (posted here) is anything like the new West End Concourse, the planning and architecture critics will be proved wrong, at least from the train riders' perspective.
*Recommended: Watch the video in NY1 article on the new concourse and/or view photo gallery in an article on the opening of the concourse by Dana Schulz in 6sqft. A caption under a photo of the Farley Post Office indicates the location is 31st Street and 8th Avenue.
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