(Bloomberg News circulated the following story by Chris Dolmetsch on August 31, 2009.)
NEW YORK — Commuters who pass through New York City’s Pennsylvania Station have a new way to get in and out of the busiest U.S. rail terminal, after New Jersey Transit today opened a new entrance at 31st Street and 7th Avenue.
The passageway allows travelers direct access to New Jersey Transit’s concourse for the first time since it opened in September 2002. They will be able to bypass the main entrance at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue, used by about 70 percent of the 81,000 New Jersey Transit riders who pass through Penn Station on a typical weekday.
About 550,000 people use the station daily on their way to and from Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit trains. That’s more than twice the number the terminal was designed to handle, and congestion leads to delays and crowding during the morning and evening rush hours.
The passageway, the first new entrance at Penn Station since the LIRR’s 34th Street entry in 1994, is one of a number of projects proposed to alleviate congestion, including building a tunnel under the Hudson River for New Jersey Transit trains and routing LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal.
The new entrance, built by Yonkers Contracting Co. of Yonkers, New York, cost $19 million, said Dan Stessel, a spokesman for New Jersey Transit, in an e-mail. It was originally estimated to cost $13.8 million when the contract was awarded in November 2006.