The governor has for years been pursuing a piecemeal reconstruction of Penn Station, or at least the portions of it that serve his constituents along the Long Island Rail Road. | AP Photo Sources: Cuomo plans a new entrance for Penn Station

Gov. Andrew Cuomo intends to build a new entrance into Penn Station, according to several knowledgeable sources.

The plans, which he is expected to announce at a Thursday press conference, call for the boring of a new entrance into the existing pedestrian plaza on 33rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The new entrance is designed to make the much-loathed station more tolerable for Penn Station commuters, particularly riders of the Long Island Rail Road, whose corridor will also be widened as part of the project.


A spokesman for the governor declined comment for this article.

The governor has for years been pursuing a piecemeal reconstruction of Penn Station, or at least the portions of it that serve his constituents along the Long Island Rail Road. The railroad, which the governor controls via the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, leases space there from Amtrak, which owns the station.

The governor is also transforming the old James A. Farley Post Office on the west side of Eighth Avenue into a train hall for Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road, a project known among urbanists as Moynihan Station.

The new entrance is intended to add another form of egress to a station that, the governor and others have argued, is dangerously cramped.

“Penn Station is especially vulnerable,” he said earlier this year. “The most heavily traveled transit hub in the hemisphere.”

In the next breath he compared the station to “catacombs.”

Cuomo's plans appear to have some support from nearby community groups.

In a recent letter, Community Board 5 Chairwoman Vikki Barbero said that while she would prefer a “holistic” approach to Penn Station that involved all of its stakeholders, her board supported his 33rd Street plans “in principle.”

“Although a new entrance at this location could reduce the size of the current Plaza 33, we recognize that this entrance will create much-needed egress capacity for the lower level of the station, providing a substantial benefit to the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors who flow through this station every day,” she wrote.

She did, however, urge the governor to think more ambitiously, from a design perspective.

“[We] should not miss the opportunity to introduce civic grandeur into one of New York’s most important public spaces,” she wrote. “The new entrance should be on a scale commensurate with the 650,000 daily passengers who use the station — a number you have predicted will double in the next 15 years. A soaring, glass ceiling with plentiful vertical circulation and open spaces will not only offer the proper arrival experience that commuters and visitors deserve, but also will offer a visible and appropriately sized exit path in case of emergency.”