Slate.com has a a fun story penned by Julia Turner on yet another reason to dislike Penn Station–impossible-to-follow signs.

Penn Station’s signage got 2.5 stars on Yelp.com (”Without a doubt, one of the poorest and most confusing arrangements for signage and passenger movement that I can imagine”), Turner notes, compared to the 4.5 stars Grand Central got.

Of course, comparing Penn Station to Grand Central is comparing Tad’s Steakhouse to Gramercy Tavern Camryn Manheim to Cameron Diaz.

But Turner does some digging into signmaking and “wayfinding”–the school of thought about how best to get people from Point A to Points B, C and D–and discovers what sort of a conflicting mess the Penn Station signs representing Amtrak, LIRR and NJT make in aggregate.

She writes:

The problem at Penn Station is not that designers skipped these steps. It’s that three sets of designers did them three times. Penn Station is owned by Amtrak, which manages its concourse on the western side of the station. But Amtrak leases the rest of the station out to the two other tenants: New Jersey Transit has the southeast corner, and the LIRR the northeast. (The Metropolitan Transit Authority oversees both the LIRR and New York City Transit, which manages the two adjacent subway stations; their sign systems are similar to the LIRR’s.) The fundamental wayfinding problem at Penn Station lies in the fact that each of these entities manages its own signs, usually without consulting the others. As a result, the station essentially has three different systems of signage.

This is a crazy way to manage information at the biggest railway station in the country. The user experiences Penn Station as one place. But the current system assumes that the user experiences the station as three distinct spaces. In truth, though, as we saw in the slide show above, many journeys require travelers to cross from zone to zone.

It’s a fun read. It’s here.

The Philadelphia Phillies opted for a chartered train ride to Gotham to prepare for their World Series showdown with the Yankees at the House That Ruth(less Pursuit of Free Agents) Built.

The Phillies also hopped a train to New York to face the Yankees in the 1950 Series.

Writes the New York Times:

The reason for the train was neither historical novelty nor an exercise in team building in advance of the World Series, which begins Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. It was pure convenience. The distance between Philadelphia and New York is too short for a flight, and a fleet of buses traveling up the New Jersey Turnpike could spend as much time on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel as the entire train ride.

So for the first time in recent memory, the team boarded the Phillie Express from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia about 4:45 p.m., bound for New York’s Penn Station.

(As an aside, today’s NY Times also has a big story about how newspaper readership is way down. My copy of the paper was trimmed badly at the printer, so I couldn’t read the print version of the Phillies-Amtrak story, as the last word in each sentence was cut. I instead read it online.)

[Ballplayers are just like you and me! Pedro Martinez turns up for work at Penn Station.] 

Amtrak officials said it was difficult clearing the sidewalks for the players upon their arrival, as they got there right at the peak of yesterday’s evening commute. The players got a mixed reaction from people schlepping into Penn Station.

When the first members of the team emerged from Penn Station on the corner of 32nd Street and Eighth Avenue, they were greeted by a couple of Phillies fans. Their voices were soon overtaken by more lusty locals chanting, “Let’s go, Yankees.”

Perhaps that explains outfielder Jayson Werth’s terse “no” when asked if he could give his assessment of the short ride.

Nevertheless, Hannah Kirkner, a native Philadelphian and a freshman at the nearby Fashion Institute of Technology, was delighted to see her team on a Manhattan sidewalk.

“I thought it was so cool they came here by train,” she said. “It’s very representative of our city to take the train. It’s so human.”

We’re doubtful the players will opt for the 4 train to Yankee Stadium tomorrow.  

[image: NY Times]

Metro-North is moving ahead on a plan to route both New Haven and Hudson Line trains into Penn Station.

 According to the railroad, ”For each line, one alternative would have provided service in all time periods and included the construction of new stations in New York City in areas not currently served by regional rail service. The second alternative involved providing service only during off-peak and weekend periods with no new stations.”

Metro-North continues:

“While still under consideration for implementation, the off-peak and weekend service alternatives will no longer be included in the federal environmental review.  It was determined that the off-peak and weekend services, without new stations, could be implemented using existing equipment and infrastructure without the need for federal funding.” Metro-North is moving forward on a plan to route the Hudson Line to Penn Station during all time periods via Amtrak’s Empire Connection, with two new stations on Manhattan’s west side in the vicinity of West 125th and the Upper West Side. Also green-lighted is  New Haven LinesService to Penn during all time periods via the Hell Gate Line, with three new stations in the east Bronx in the vicinity of Co-op City, Parkchester and Hunts Point.

Don’t hold your breath — these things take years and years. Metro-North will next prepare an Environmental Assessment, which is expected to be complete in 2011. 

Penn Station, whose 1964 destruction and ensuing rebuild is a vital plot point in Mad Men this season, unveiled a new entrance/exit for New Jersey Transit commuters today, reports LoHud.com.

JerseyJim reports:

Autumn in New York has always been a great season, but it just got a little better for commuters at Penn Station.

At 7th avenue and 31st Street, a new entrance greets commuters climbing in and out of the lobby of NJ Transit — saving most folks from the daily merge onto the central stairwell at 32nd street, where the massive flow of LIRR, subway, Amtrak and dazed tourists all funnelled between street level, and the low clearance lobby under Madison Square Garden.

This well located access to all commuters heading downtown, will break up the bottlenecks at 32nd street, and for at least a day or so, we can avoid the AM New York barkers that block the passage at the top of the stairs on 32nd street.

As the August edition of FYI Commuter Update tells us, the design is meant “to capture the style of imagery of the original Penn Station, including its barrel-vaulted ceiling with exposed, open trusses, exposed structure and mosaics that include images of the original station.”

For now, I just hope the windows don’t leak and the place stays clean. But so far, my commute looks to be cut down by two minutes each way!

[photos from JerseyJim, but not the Mad Men one]

New York actor Chad Lindsey sounds like a cool cat. The guy jumped onto the subway tracks at Penn Station Monday to rescue a guy that had fallen and knocked himself out after a blow to the head.

Not only that, but the guy blended back into the anonymous city landscape after that. No Letterman, no cover of the NY Post, no tooting his own horn. Just an anonymous Joe risking his life to save a fellow human.

Pretty cool.

In fact, it was his friends who responded to a short article in the Times Monday about the incident.

An editor at The Times, Wendell Jamieson, said a crowd entered his car on the downtown C train, and the people were thanking and congratulating one among them, a disheveled fellow filthy with track grime.

The man, having already foregone any chance at glory by boarding the next train to pull into the station, declined to speak to Mr. Jamieson, unfortunately. We’ll never know what was going through this man’s mind during his dangerous time on the tracks.

Of course, Lindsey might flip the script, so to speak, and turn himself into the biggest media whore since Wesley Autrey. Since he’s an actor in a city that’s lousy with them, he probably should.

But for now, Chad Lindsey strikes us as a class act. Currently starring in an Off-Broadway show called Kasper Hauser, Lindsey told the Times the gravity of what he’d done didn’t really sink in until a few minutes later, after he’d boarded the C train that almost killed him and his benefactor, Theodore Larson.

“Then I sort of freaked out, and I was nervous and shaky. These five women opened their purses and gave me Handi-Wipes. I was covered in blood and dirt from the subway tracks.”

A welcome whiff of spring weather today, giving my winter overcoat a much needed day off. I took new stock in my morning commute in a top ten assessment of its odoriferous offerings.  

Sulfur: The first strong burst of metal, as the train brakes to a stop. Welcome to The Machine.

Cranberry Bleach: The Fruity Pebbles disinfectant in the bathroom car.

Perfume: The Summit power-moms arrive. A woozy swirl of Charlie and oatmeal.

Homeless Funk: Detraining in Penn Station, we confirm strong olfactory evidence of local pack of nocturnal bipeds, also known as The Mole People.

The I Can’t Believe There’s So Much Butter Bakery: Just before the 7th Ave stairs in Penn Station, the stale scent of 10,000 cheese danish, cased-in and sweating.

29th St Cigar Shoppe: A sweet musky odor vents out, like that first deep drag. I’m zapped back to childhood roadtrips in the family station wagon.  “A nice walk with a morning cigar would be great!,” I think. Twenty paces later, it’s totally gone. Keep walking.

Fake Starbucks Coffee Odeur: Very unique, but wait a minute, is that what coffee really smells like?

Drywall and Fresh Concrete. The night crew of illegals/barely legals has just demolished another floor of a vacated building. In a cloud of white dust, they’re lined up to dump dozens of small wheelie containers of drywall and rebar into a garbage truck. These guys have been working all night. They’re probably heading out to their day jobs shortly.

Bike Messenger Pot Smoke: Passing the bike depot, the morning line is laughing it up, prepping for today’s battle with the taxi terrorists.

Coffee kiosk: The real deal. This guy drove in from Queens at 5am, roach coach in tow. The coffee is dark, blistering hot, and fresh. The blueberry muffins are cold, but as dense as carbon.

In a moment I’ll be inside, where the smell of stale carpet, Twizzlers, and cardboard fill my day.

I’m so bummed.
 
Every weeknight I blindly march to Penn Station, tunes blaring through my iPod, and hit the stairmaster to NJ Transit. I keep my eyes open as I slalom north through the crowds, but I have yet to be confronted by the cute girl or pudgy guy that host the oddly catchy Beer Money on SNY every so often (and until spring training, seemingly more often than not).
 

It makes sense that the speedy commuter crowd makes unlikely prospects for such a contestant, since the dim-witty banter and clearing of hecklers probably outlasts most folks’ patience.
 
Clearly a quick-fix on the time-filling technique of cable television, with oodles of local sports trivia to distract the extremely bored folks that circle Madison Square Garden before a Knick game, or the countless and luckless fans outside Shea Stadium in the good ‘ol days, the hosts of Beer Money promise cold hard cash for answers to three trivia questions.
 
I must confess that the field of my sports trivia knowledge is limited to very random nuggets of names and facts that have populated all local sports. If I were indeed confronted with the opportunity to answer questions, I would indeed be stumped.

So on second thought,  let them have their beer money. I’ve got a train to catch…and April 1st is getting closer every day.
 
- jersey jim

The cover of today’s AM New York caught my eye as I breezed past the news rack at Hummerville station. “Penn Libation,” it bellowed. “After dark, a party breaks out in the station.”

My first thought was that it was one of those Improv Everywhere stunts that have seen people freeze in place in Grand Central and show up en masse at Best Buy in blue polo shirts and tan khakis, much to the confusion of shoppers.

In fact, it’s a story on the drunks heading home after a night of partying. “It’s beauty coming in and the beast coming home,” eloquently states one engineer about the harsh effects of alcohol on the young female form.

“It is all business during weekdays,” the story teases, “but on the weekends the bridge and tunnel crowd comes dressed to party and leaves partied out.”

Alas, the feature reflects what those in the media called a slow news day–despite the monolithic financial institutions crumbling around us. While reporter Garett Sloane clearly states that the true crazy stuff happens around 2 or 3 a.m. (when the Long Island Railroad turns into the “vomit comet,” according to the same eloquent engineer), it appears the reporter has made like a Mineola 20-something who has to work in the morning, and busted out of Penn Station around 1 a.m.

Too bad, he probably would’ve had some crazy stuff to write about if he’d stuck around.

I love the ads behind home plate at the Cincinnati ballpark tonight–two large panels for something called Penn Station East Coast Subs. “We Grill,” promises one panel, while the other grunts, “Grill Good.”

Yes, a restaurant named for the Gotham fine-dining haven called Penn Station, home of Hot & Crusty, McAnn’s, and the McDonald’s they put in the old LIRR men’s room. Almost makes you want to embark on a culinary tour of southwestern Ohio.

OK, that was mean.

Armpit Grip 

A woman’s head was under my armpit.

It fit, I’ll give you that.  On a crowded train you do what you have to do. I’d been caught Tuesday morning in the crush to get on the F train at Roosevelt. Man, was it crowded. I couldn’t stop at my usual door spot. I was swept forward by the wave of humanity behind me. I went with the flow, sometimes a good thing to do when tempers are flaring because trains are delayed.  

So I found myself in the center of the car, equidistant to each pole and the doors, and the rail to all four corners. What to do? I had a few seconds before the doors closed and in that time I had to make a decision that would impact significantly on the comfort of my twenty-minute subway ride. I knew I didn’t want to try to use the ceiling grip (tented fingers on the ceiling used as an upside down anchor to stop you from landing on a nearby passenger when the train either started or stopped). The ceiling grip never worked for more than a stop; it was too difficult to keep in place for multiple-stop journeys.

So I looked at my pole options. With all hand-grips equidistant, I needed another criteria for selection. A quick scan showed me there was space high on a center pole to my right. I’m not that tall, but I’m tall for my neighborhood so I reached over heads and took a high grip – sometimes called the armpit grip – before the train lurched forward.  

I looked at the woman under my arm, thinking that if I smiled at her at least the awkwardness of the situation might be alleviated. She was a short Asian woman, probably in her sixties, wearing black and red, with a pocketbook clutched tightly under her left arm. She stared forward with the patented cross-cultural subway passenger’s blank stare.

A woman next to her, I realized, was talking to her – or perhaps I should say talking at her. She was also Asian, dressed in black and red and had a similar bag under her arm. Her whole arm encircled the pole I had chosen. She spoke Chinese in a barking tone, thrusting her chin at the woman under my arm.

I recoiled a moment, thinking my armpit was in danger. But then I relaxed a little, as her one-sided conversation continued without fisticuffs emerging.

I surreptitiously glanced down at the woman beneath my arm. Her impassive face never moved while her partner spoke. No raised eyebrow. No involuntary twitch. No nod or shake of the head. No eye contact. Nothing. The woman, who I now assumed was either a relative or a good friend – at least in my mind that’s who she was – continued talking and pinching her face together as if saying, “Can you believe the things that I have to go through?” 

They got off at 34th Street Penn Station, and my armpit, no longer exposed, breathed a sigh of relief. At 23rd Street we were still crowded and the wave of commuters swept me out the doors.

I pulled myself to shore, out of the throng of humanity, and waited for the turnstiles to clear. Then, adjusting my bag on my back, I exited with some sense of dignity.  

Sometimes you go with the flow and sometimes you wait for your chance to swim alone.

–Joe Lunievicz