Written by David Peter Alan, Contributing Editor
In the previous article in this series, we examined plans for through-running between different railroads serving Penn Station, but not a different type of through-running: trains running through Midtown Manhattan between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal (GCT), the home of Metro-North and its lines. They serve Westchester and counties north of there in New York State, as well as Connecticut, as far as New Haven and with branches to New Canaan, Danbury and Waterbury. Historically, the lines in New York State (Hudson and Harlem Lines) were part of the New York Central Railroad, while those which serve Connecticut and the part of Westchester County on the way to Connecticut, were part of the New Haven Railroad.
In this article we will look at efforts to link the two busy Midtown stations together, so trains could stop at both. The idea, put most simply, would allow riders heading toward the City to have a choice of going to the East Side or the West Side, whether they came from areas served by New Jersey Transit (NJT), the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), or Metro-North.
No Easy Trip
Midtown Manhattan is well-defined; both by its boundaries and its central dividing line. Its northern boundary is 60th Street; a dividing line now monitored by cameras and E-Z Pass readers that collect the newly implemented Congestion Pricing toll. The southern boundary is not defined quite as specifically, but there seems to be some understanding that it’s 34th Street, with a slight southerly dip along Seventh to Ninth Avenues to include Penn Station. Some people say that it extends several blocks further south. While there has been some recent effort to build office buildings on the “Far West Side” west of Penn Station, most of the office space in Midtown is located northeast of Penn Station, and there is more office space that surrounds GCT than is located within a short walk from Penn Station. The east-west dividing line everywhere north of Washington Square in the Village (New Yorkers never call it “Greenwich Village”) is Fifth Avenue. Numbers for addresses extend eastward and westward from there, and the East and West Sides at any latitude in the City are generally considered different places.
In his 1960 novel The Night They Raided Minsky’s, Rowland Barber noted that much commerce and other activity in Manhattan runs on the north-south axis along the avenues, while much less runs crosstown. That remains accurate today, as demonstrated by the subway system. Four trunk lines have crosstown components only when heading to one of the “outer boroughs.” Only the historic BMT line such a northwesterly component in Manhattan. Only the L Train has full crosstown service on 14th Street, and there is also some in Midtown, as several lines wend their way to Queens. No subway line goes directly between Penn Station and GCT to deliver a one-seat ride between the two stations…