The MTA is taking seriously a proposal to bring Metro-North and 28,000 more commuters to Penn Station. Trains on the Hudson and New Haven lines would use existing Amtrak lines to service the West Side, but the LIRR would be forced to cut some service to make room for Metro-North, a move that advocates for the plan say is only fair given that the LIRR will serve Grand Central in 2018. Naturally, some (read: Long Islanders) are skeptical. "It's the old saying," the executive director for the Association for a Better Long Island tells Newsday. "Once it's gone, it's gone forever." Yet this assertion was famously disproved by the McRib and the Mickey Rourke Accords of 2005.
Bringing Metro-North to Penn Station is an idea that has been kicking around for decades, and new MTA chief Joseph Lhota seems intrigued by the "the opportunity to view the MTA as one MTA, and that we'll have a regional system that is all integrated." Still, he acknowledges that the proposal is "controversial within the MTA."
Meanwhile, Metro-North supporters are claiming that LIRR ridership will drop at Penn Station once the Grand Central project is finished, and that the LIRR all but assured them access to Penn Station. "That's what was promised to us," the co-chairman of the MTA's commuter rail committee says. "They would get access to Grand Central and we would get access to Penn Station." According to a 2008 report from the state comptroller, adding Metro-North to Penn Station would "only" cost $1.2 billion, which is about what a new Metro-North station costs.
All of this talk may be somewhat premature. Metro-North told 2nd Ave. Sagas in November that the Penn Station assessment wouldn't even be completed until 2013. But think of it this way: residents of the Bronx could get to 34th Street and their sweet, sweet donuts in 25 minutes.
