Re: “Fix the East River Tunnels First,” Larry Penner.
Although the author neglects details on Penn Station’s $10 billion renovation (he tells us what it won’t fix), I agree with the author that safety should be a priority.
However, how in the name of common sense can the author consider opening the Hilton Passageway/Gimbels Corridor supporting safety and reliability? The HP/GC was closed due to what the author called in another opinion piece “security concerns.” Perfunctory research indicates that in 1991 a woman was brutally raped and robbed inside the passageway. What does the author call attempted murder? A difference of opinion?
If the author paid half as much attention to the quality of his opinion pieces rather than ensuring he submits them to as many publications as possible, he would realize that the area around Penn Station is home to the city’s mushrooming homeless population. Reopening the passageway would attract large numbers of them to cool off in summer and stay warm in winter. They would infest the tunnels, ingesting drugs, engaging in aggressive panhandling and using the tunnel as a bathroom.
In a November 2020 opinion piece in Mass Transit Magazine, the author discusses a proposal by Vornado Trust to reopen it for a cost of $150 million. In an opinion piece in the Observer almost seven years earlier he mentions the same proposal. Yet in opinion piece after opinion piece the author talks about how the costs of various projects almost invariably go up year after year. So are we to believe that because the author is in favor of reopening the passageway the cost will remain the same?
The author constantly excoriates the MTA for unrealistic capital plans. How is it a good idea to spend millions of dollars reopening a passageway that was closed because of, as the author in unsurpassed fashion understates, “security concerns?” Especially since the passageway will benefit only a relative handful of riders?
Nat Weiner
Bronx
