NY Commuters Brace for “Summer of Hell” amid Penn Station Revamp

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(Newswire.net — July 23, 2017) –In late June, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for the city’s subways, due to major traffic problems and obsolete infrastructure.

The New York governor said the state of emergency will speed up the functioning of the city’s transit system, where unreliable service and delayed departures are rather common.

Because of that, tens of people were injured in a train derailment in June.

Andrew Cuomo said that the condition of the New York subway is completely unacceptable, resulting from decades of insufficient investment, untimely maintenance and a rapid growth in the number of passengers.

Repair works will cause frequent delays at Penn Station, which is the main transfer station for special lines from New York and New Jersey as well as for Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which operates Penn Station.  

Cuomo said that passengers could experience a summer of hell. What does it mean?

It means two months of inconvenience, a 20 percent reduction in the number of trains, leaving tens of thousands of commuters looking for alternative routes and alternatives for public transport: ferries, express buses and railways.

Already two weeks into the massive repair project at Penn Station, riders have already been grappling with daily service disruptions, while commuters have been expressing their frustration with the situation on Twitter.

Some of the commuters received doughnuts and coffee outside the train station in South Orange from Sheena Collum, mayor at Township of South Orange Village, and other local officials. They greeted commuters in an attempt to lighten them up before the launch of two-month repair works. 

Pennsylvania Station, also known as New York Penn Station or Penn Station, is the main intercity railroad station in New York City.

The station is served by 1,200 trains a day. There are more than 600,000 commuter rail and Amtrak passengers who use the station on an average weekday, or up to one thousand every 90 seconds. It is the busiest passenger transportation facility in the United States and also in North America.