Pennsylvania Station (also known as New York Penn Station or Penn Station) is the main intercity railroad station in New York City and the busiest transportation facility in the Western Hemisphere, serving more than 600,000 passengers per weekday . The station occupies a complex beneath and bounded by Seventh and Ninth avenues and 31st and 33rd streets, extending under Madison Square Garden and the James A. Farley Building, with additional exits to surrounding streets in Midtown Manhattan. The main concourse is located both beneath Madison Square Garden and within the Farley building, where it is known as Moynihan Train Hall. It is close to several popular locations, including the Empire State Building, Hudson Yards, Koreatown, and Macy's Herald Square.

Penn Station has 21 tracks fed by seven single-track tunnels: two North River Tunnels, four East River Tunnels, and the single-track Empire Connection tunnel. It is at the center of the Northeast Corridor, a passenger rail line that connects New York City with Boston to its north and Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. to its south, along with various intermediate stations. Intercity trains are operated by Amtrak, which owns the station, while commuter rail services are operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and NJ Transit (NJT). Connections are available within the complex to the New York City Subway and buses.

Penn Station is named for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), its builder and original owner, and shares its name with several stations in other cities. The original Pennsylvania Station was an ornate station building designed by McKim, Mead, and White and considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style. Completed in 1910, it enabled direct rail access to New York City from the south for the first time. Its head house and train shed were torn down in 1963 at a time of low train ridership, with the rail infrastructure reconstituted as the smaller underground station that survives today. The New York Times editorial board described the demolition of the original station as a "monumental act of vandalism",

The rival New York Central Railroad's line ran down Manhattan from the north under Park Avenue and terminated at Grand Central Depot (later replaced by Grand Central Terminal) at 42nd Street. Many proposals for a cross-Hudson connection were advanced in the late 19th century, but financial panics in the 1870s and 1890s scared off potential investors. In any event, none of the proposals advanced during this time were considered feasible.

An early proposal for a bridge was considered but rejected. The alternative was to tunnel under the river, but this was infeasible for steam locomotive use. The development of the electric locomotive at the turn of the 20th century made a tunnel feasible. In 1901, PRR president Alexander Cassatt announced the railroad's plan to enter New York City by tunneling under the Hudson and building a grand station on the West Side of Manhattan south of 34th Street. The station would sit in Manhattan's Tenderloin district, a historical red-light district known for its corruption and prostitution.

Beginning in June 1903, the two single-track North River Tunnels were bored from the west under the Hudson River. A second set of four single-track tunnels, the East River Tunnels, were bored from the east under the East River, linking the new station to Queens, the PRR-owned Long Island Rail Road, and Sunnyside Yard in Queens, where trains would be maintained and assembled. Construction was completed on the Hudson River tunnels on October 9, 1906, and on the East River tunnels on March 18, 1908.

Original structure

thumb|The exterior of Penn Station in 1911

thumb|Penn Station's interior in the 1930s

thumb|One of few remnants of the original station still in use, a staircase between tracks 3 and 4

A small portion of Penn Station opened on September 8, 1910, in conjunction with the opening of the East River Tunnels, and LIRR riders gained direct railroad service to Manhattan. On November 27, 1910, Penn Station was fully opened to the public. With the station's full opening, the PRR became the only railroad to enter New York City from the south.

During half a century of operation by the Pennsylvania Railroad (1910–1963), scores of intercity passenger trains arrived and departed daily to Chicago and St. Louis on "Pennsy" rails and beyond on connecting railroads to Miami and the west. Along with Long Island Rail Road trains, Penn Station saw trains of the New Haven and the Lehigh Valley railroads. A side effect of the tunneling project was to open the city up to the suburbs, and within 10 years of opening, two-thirds of the daily passengers coming through Penn Station were commuters. demolition of the above-ground head house began in October 1963. A giant steel deck was placed over the tracks and platforms to allow rail service to continue during construction. Photographs of the day showed passengers waiting for trains even as the head house was demolished around them.

The demolition of the Penn Station head house caused outrage internationally. "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat," the architectural historian Vincent Scully famously wrote of the original station. The controversy over the demolition of such a well-known landmark, and its deplored replacement, is often cited as a catalyst for the architectural preservation movement in the United States. Within the decade, Grand Central Terminal was protected under the city's new landmarks preservation act, a protection upheld by the courts in 1978 after a challenge by Grand Central's owner, Penn Central (the corporate successor of the PRR, following its merger with the rival New York Central Railroad).

Under Madison Square Garden

thumb|Amtrak concourse in 1974

Post-1968, the core Penn Station has been underground, sitting below Madison Square Garden, 33rd Street, and Two Penn Plaza. The core has three levels: concourses on the upper two levels and train platforms on the lowest. The two levels of concourses, while renovated and expanded during the construction of Madison Square Garden, are original to the 1910 station, as are the tracks and platforms.

Over the following decades, various renovations attempted to add service and some concourse space. The West End Concourse under Eighth Avenue opened in 1986. In 1987, a rail connection to the West Side Rail Yard opened, and in 1991, the opening of the Empire Connection allowed Amtrak to consolidate all of its New York City trains at Penn Station; previously, trains from the Empire Corridor terminated at Grand Central Terminal, a legacy of the two stations' respective roots in separate railroads.

In 1994, the station was renovated to add the 34th Street LIRR entrance and central corridor, along with artwork and improved waiting and concession areas. The new entrance consisted of a structure with a glass and brick facade, a clock salvaged from the original station, and air-conditioning units for the terminal. In 2002, the NJ Transit concourse was created in space previously occupied by retail and Amtrak office space, although the concourse could only be accessed from the Amtrak entrance on 32nd Street. and the entrance opened in 2009. In 2020, the ticketed waiting room on the main concourse was renovated by Amtrak and NJ Transit to include furniture with USB outlets, an additional entrance, and a lactation suite.

After the September 11 attacks, security was increased and passenger flow curtailed. In 2002, $100 million of work added security features such as lighting, cameras, and barricades. The taxiway under Madison Square Garden, which ran from 31st Street to 33rd Street at mid-block, was permanently closed off with concrete Jersey barriers. Escalators providing direct access to the lobby of Madison Square Garden were closed and later removed. The underground Gimbels Passageway connecting pedestrians to 34th Street–Herald Square has been sealed off since 1986, after decades of safety concerns and sexual assaults.

Despite the modest renovations, the underground Penn Station continued to be criticized as "reviled", "dysfunctional", and a low-ceilinged "catacomb" lacking charm, especially when compared to the much larger and more ornate Grand Central Terminal. The New York Times, in an editorial supporting development of an enlarged terminal, said that "Amtrak's beleaguered customers...scurry through underground rooms bereft of light or character," and Times transit reporter Michael M. Grynbaum called Penn Station "the ugly stepchild of the city's two great rail terminals." After its nadir in the 1960s, ridership exploded in subsequent decades, a situation never contemplated by the structure's designers. By the 2010s, the station operated at almost three times its intended capacity; over 600,000 passengers used the station daily in 2019. Many redevelopment or expansion concepts were proposed over the 1990s and 2000s, but none reached fruition until funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enabled the expansion of the West End Concourse of the LIRR under the Farley Building in 2016.

In 2016 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans for the renovation of Penn Station and redevelopment of the Farley Building to include a new train hall, calling his plan the Empire Station Complex. Moynihan Train Hall opened in January 2021 and was named for the man who had conceived it. The $1.6 billion, renovation retained the landmarked Beaux Arts Farley Building, added a central atrium with a glass roof, and provided access to Amtrak and LIRR trains, receiving the 2021 Prix Versailles for passenger stations. A new 33rd Street entrance to the LIRR concourse opened at the same time.

Following the opening of the 33rd Street entrance, in 2023 the LIRR concourse was doubled in width and the ceilings were raised to at least feet by removing seven "head knockers", low-hanging steel beams only above the concourse's floor which were part of the original Penn Station. 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues was converted into a pedestrian plaza and permanently closed to vehicular traffic, opening in June 2024 as part of a $65 million project funded by Vornado.

Services

The station is served by 1,300 arrivals and departures per day, twice as many as there were during the 1970s. There are more than 600,000 subway, commuter rail and Amtrak passengers who use the station on an average weekday, or up to 1,000 every ninety seconds. and in North America.

Beyond the subway entrances of the Penn Station, the new iconic 7Av/33St entrance and the 7Av/34St entrance are open 24/7.

Operations

Penn Station currently operates in a hybrid mode, with some trains turning back at the station and others running through the station. Almost all Amtrak trains servicing the Northeast Corridor run through Penn Station in either revenue-to-revenue or revenue-to-non-revenue mode, while LIRR and NJT operate both turning trains and through-running trains. This hybrid regime is optimized for the peak commuter demand between the suburbs and Manhattan, with a highly optimized operating plan for each railroad that results in unbalanced service.

  • From Penn Station:
  • at 34th Street–Penn Station, under Eighth Avenue
  • at 34th Street–Penn Station, under Seventh Avenue
  • From Herald Square, one block east at Sixth Avenue:
  • at 34th Street–Herald Square station, under Broadway & Sixth Avenue

PATH

Connections are also available to the PATH system at 33rd Street station, under Sixth Avenue on Herald Square. The JSQ-33 and HOB-33 services terminate at 33rd Street on weekdays, and are combined into the JSQ-33 (via HOB) service on late nights, weekends and holidays.

Bus and coach

New York City Bus

The following MTA Regional Bus Operations buses stop near Penn Station:

  • M7 (Lenox, Columbus, Amsterdam, Sixth and Seventh Avenues): southbound to Greenwich Village, via Seventh Avenue; or northbound to Harlem via Sixth, Amsterdam, and Lenox Avenues
  • M20 (Seventh and Eighth Avenues/Varick and Hudson Streets): northbound to Lincoln Center via Eighth Avenue; or southbound to South Ferry via Seventh Avenue
  • M34 Select Bus Service (34th Street Crosstown): westbound to Javits Center; or eastbound to FDR Drive
  • M34A Select Bus Service (34th Street Crosstown): westbound to Port Authority Bus Terminal; or eastbound to Waterside Plaza and Kips Bay
  • Q32 (Fifth and Madison Avenues): northbound only, to Jackson Heights, Queens

Intercity coaches

Intercity bus service to and from Penn Station is provided by Vamoose Bus, Tripper Bus, and Go Buses. Vamoose Bus runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Bethesda, Maryland; Arlington, Virginia; and Lorton, Virginia. Tripper Bus runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Bethesda, Maryland and Arlington, Virginia. Go Buses runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Newton, Massachusetts and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2021, the private parking lot at 300 West 31st Street (the southwest corner of 8th Avenue) was established as a major Midtown Manhattan hub stop for FlixBus.

Most intercity and commuter bus services to and from midtown Manhattan use the Port Authority Bus Terminal, located approximately 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) to the north of Penn Station.

Proposed Metro-North service

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to bring Metro-North Railroad commuter trains to Penn Station as part of its Penn Station Access project. The East Side Access project, which was completed in 2023, has freed up track and platform space at Penn Station by redirecting some LIRR trains from Penn Station to Grand Central Madison. This new capacity, as well as track connections resulting from the East Side Access project, will allow Metro-North trains on the New Haven Line to run to Penn Station via Amtrak's Hell Gate Bridge.

Four new local Metro-North stations in the Bronx are planned as part of this project, at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester/VanNest, and Hunts Point. The MTA also proposes a second service from the Metro-North's Hudson Line to Penn Station using Amtrak's West Side Line in Manhattan. The Penn Station Access project would provide direct rides from Connecticut, Westchester County, the Lower Hudson Valley, and the Bronx to West Midtown; ease reverse-commuting from Manhattan and the Bronx to Westchester County, the Lower Hudson Valley, and Connecticut; and provide transportation service to areas of the Bronx without direct subway service.

Station layout

thumb|The West End Concourse

Penn Station does not have a unified design or floor plan but rather is divided into separate Amtrak, LIRR and NJ Transit concourses with each concourse maintained and styled differently by its respective operator. The Amtrak and NJ Transit concourses are located on the first level below the street level while the Long Island Rail Road concourse is two levels below street level. The layout has been called a "confusing, multilevel maze of corridors," even prompting Amtrak at one point to release an app to assist commuters in navigating the station.

Platform widths vary, with eight of the 11 platforms in the range of 19–20 feet wide. Platform 6 is the narrowest, at 17 feet, while Platform 1 is slightly wider, at 22 feet. Platform 10 is the widest platform, used exclusively by LIRR and nominally 38 feet wide. It was created out of the original station's waiting rooms and main concourse, though few remnants of the original still exist in the space. It was renovated in the early 2000s in anticipation of Acela service and includes an enclosed waiting area for ticketed passengers with seats, outlets and Wi-Fi. The ticketed waiting room underwent another $7.2 million renovation from 2019 to 2020, which included new furniture and fixtures with USB outlets, a ceiling with LED lighting, a second entrance closer to the NJ Transit concourse, and a lactation suite for nursing mothers.

The LIRR's connecting concourse runs below West 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, as it has since the original station opened in 1910. Significant renovations were made to the LIRR areas over a three-year period ending in 1994, including the opening of the Central Corridor passageway and the addition of a new entry pavilion on 34th Street. The West End Concourse, west of Eighth Avenue, opened in 1986, In 2023, the LIRR concourse was renovated again, doubling the width of the corridor, raising the ceilings, and adding another entry pavilion directly from 33rd Street.

The NJ Transit concourse near Seventh Avenue opened in 2002 out of existing retail and Amtrak office space. A new street-level entrance to this concourse at the corner of 31st Street and Seventh Avenue opened in September 2009. Before a dedicated NJ Transit concourse opened, NJ Transit used space in the Amtrak concourse.

Moynihan Train Hall provides access to tracks 5 through 21, and contains ticket desks and service for Amtrak as well as the Long Island Railroad. Amtrak operations moved to the train hall entirely when it opened in 2021. The train hall contains a ticketing and baggage area, a waiting lounge, an Amtrak Metropolitan lounge, and retail spaces.

The station's three providers use different official addresses for the station.

  • Amtrak: 351 West 31st Street
  • LIRR: 34th Street at 7th and 8th Avenues
  • NJ Transit: 31st Street and 7th Avenue

<gallery mode="packed" heights="140px" perrow="8">

File:Blizzard of 2015- Empty Penn Station (16192638879).jpg|LIRR concourse in 2015

File:NewYorkPenn02LB.jpg|Amtrak concourse

File:LIRR East End Gateway 20210204 224316486.jpg|East End Gateway at 7th Avenue

File:Penn Station entrance.jpg|8th Avenue entrance

File:Moynihan Train Hall - Entrance (51878229291).jpg|Entrance in the Farley Post Office Building

</gallery>

{| class="collapsible collapsed" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3

! colspan=2 style="text-align:center; font-size:88%" |

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|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=50 valign=top|Above ground

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" colspan=2 valign=top|Madison Square Garden/Two Penn Plaza

|-

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=50 valign=top|G

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=100 valign=top|Street Level

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=400 valign=top|Exit/Entrance

|-

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=50 valign=top rowspan=2|UC

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=100 valign=top|Amtrak Concourse

|style="border-top:solid 1px gray;" width=400 valign=top|Amtrak tickets, transfer to 34th Street–Penn Station (IND Eighth Avenue Line) station; exit to 33rd Street, connection to Exit and Connecting concourses Due to the lack of proper ventilation in the tunnels and station, only electric locomotives and dual-mode locomotives are scheduled to enter Penn Station. Diesel-only NJT trains terminate at Hoboken Terminal or Newark Penn Station, and diesel-only LIRR trains terminate at or prior to Long Island City. The established throughput capacity of the tunnels is 24-25 trains per hour in each direction for the North River Tunnels and 20-21 trains per hour in the peak direction for the East River Tunnels.

2017–2018 service disruptions and track improvements

Since the early 2010s, Amtrak had planned to fix the deteriorating rails and infrastructure around Penn Station, but due to the prioritization of other projects, applied only minimal fixes. In early 2017, this culminated in numerous power outages, derailments, and delays due to track maintenance delays. There were frequent service disruptions to train schedules caused by the deterioration of its tracks and their supporting infrastructure, as well as in those of the East River and North River tunnels that respectively connect the station to Long Island and New Jersey.

A string of early 2017 service disruptions started on March 23, 2017, when an Acela train derailed, causing delays for the day. On April 3, a NJ Transit train derailed at a known problem site, where repairs had been deferred. This closure caused a cascading failure, delaying Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road trains on the unaffected tracks.

On April 14, a New Jersey Transit train became stuck in the North River tunnels, causing the station to grow crowded with waiting passengers. After an Amtrak police officer used a Taser on a man who was acting disruptively, rumors of gunshots sparked a stampede that injured 16 people. Following the stampede, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer called on Amtrak to centralize law enforcement response.

As a result of these incidents, the Long Island Rail Road had proposed taking over Penn Station from Amtrak to improve maintenance, and New Jersey has suggested withholding state payments to Amtrak. Five tracks were closed for repairs as part of the reconstruction work, severely reducing track capacity in a situation media outlets deemed "the summer of hell". Many affected NJ Transit passengers were diverted to take the PATH instead. Some Amtrak trains from the Empire Corridor were routed to Grand Central instead of Penn Station. Regular service resumed on September 5, 2017.

Amtrak made further improvements to Penn Station's trackage in summer 2018. As a result, some Empire Corridor trains were rerouted again to Grand Central. The Lake Shore Limited and Cardinal to Chicago were truncated or rerouted because of this work.

Planning and redevelopment<span class="anchor" id="Future"></span>

thumb|Passenger congestion in the LIRR concourse, 2016

Resurgence of train ridership in the 21st century pushed the current Pennsylvania Station under Madison Square Garden to capacity, leading to several proposals to renovate or rebuild the station, often characterized as correcting for the 1960s demolition of the original facility. The Times noted in 2025 that a succession of elected officials over several decades—including Governors Pataki, Spitzer, Cuomo, and Hochul—had made gestures at reconstructing the station, though no such reconstruction ultimately materialized. Among the reasons, the Times cited the controlling interests of multiple transit companies—Amtrak, which owns the station, along with NJ Transit and the MTA, which operate within it—and the influence of James Dolan, whose company owns Madison Square Garden and the air rights above the station.

In 2013, the Regional Plan Association and Municipal Art Society formed the Alliance for a New Penn Station, advocating for limiting the extension of Madison Square Garden's operating permit to ten years and soliciting designs to move the arena. Garden officials called the plans "pie-in-the-sky", In January 2016, at the same time he announced the development of Moynihan Train Hall, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would solicit proposals for the redevelopment of the station under the Garden as a public-private partnership called the Empire Station Complex.

In June 2023, nearing the end of the ten-year permit granted in 2013, the MTA, Amtrak, and NJ Transit filed a report stating Madison Square Garden was no longer compatible with Penn Station, saying, "MSG's existing configuration and property boundaries impose severe constraints." On September 14, 2023, the New York City Council voted 48–0 to renew the operating permit for Madison Square Garden for five years, the shortest-ever granted to the Garden by the city.

Station reconstruction plans in the 2020s

In April 2021, MTA officials under governor Andrew Cuomo proposed two options to reconstruct the Penn Station building under Madison Square Garden, to be financed by the development of 10 new office and residential towers in the surrounding neighborhood: one retained the existing two-level concourse, the other envisioned a taller single-level concourse with a glass atrium in the former midblock taxiway. Opponents alleged the tower development would provide a disproportionate tax advantage to real-estate firm Vornado Realty Trust.

In November 2021, after Cuomo resigned, governor Kathy Hochul attempted to advance reconstruction by selecting the one-level plan and slightly reducing the size of the office tower development, and the administration announced FXCollaborative as designer in September 2022 with the assistance of John McAslan. But in February 2023, Vornado declared it would no longer invest in new office space due to lack of demand following the COVID-19 pandemic, and that June Hochul announced Penn Station reconstruction would be "decoupled" from any office tower development.

In April 2025, transportation secretary Sean Duffy announced the U.S. Department of Transportation would take over reconstruction from the MTA, and he selected former New York City Transit Authority president Andy Byford to lead the effort. In response, Hochul said that New York State would no longer pay $1.3 billion that it had previously expected to contribute. Duffy announced later that year that work would begin in 2027 and would cost $7 billion, and in May 2026 Amtrak selected out of three finalists a joint venture of Skanska and Halmar International as developer. The approved plan would keep Madison Square Garden in place and rebuild the passenger facilities beneath it.

The Gateway Program was unveiled in 2011, one year after the cancellation of the somewhat-similar Access to the Region's Core (ARC) project, and was originally projected to cost $13.5&nbsp;billion and take 14 years to build. In 2015, Amtrak said that damage done to the existing trans-Hudson tunnels by Sandy had made their replacement urgent. That year, Amtrak reported that environmental and design work was underway, estimated the project cost at $20&nbsp;billion, and said construction would last four to five years.

A draft environmental impact statement was released in July 2017, but the first administration of Donald Trump delayed consideration of it. Unblocking the project was a stated priority of the Biden administration, and the project was approved in May 2021. Federal funding was included in the Biden administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which became law in November 2021, and Biden announced in 2023 that the federal government was committing as much as $11 billion of the $16.1 billion price tag, with the states of New York and New Jersey splitting the

rest. Construction of the new Hudson River tunnel began in late 2023 and was underway as of 2026, despite being briefly interrupted by the freezing of funds by the Trump administration for various reasons overturned by judges. The new tunnel is scheduled to open in 2035.

Southern expansion

In January 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a proposed southern annex to Penn Station, part of his vision for the Empire Station Complex. The annex would include eight new tracks with four platforms and would involve demolishing the entire block bounded by 30th and 31st streets between Seventh and Eighth avenues, directly south of the existing station, as well as parts of the two blocks to the east and west. The new tracks would connect to and take advantage of the new capacity provided by the Hudson River tunnels built as part of the Gateway Program. The necessity of new tracks has been debated by regional advocacy groups who suggest that service improvements to enable regional through-running could similarly boost capacity. The southern terminal, which could cost as much as $16.7 billion, never proceeded; in March 2025 Governor Kathy Hochul said she no longer supported demolition of the block, and in August 2025 Amtrak said it was abandoning the expansion in favor of reconstructing the existing station and exploring other capacity improvements such as through-running.