I haven't seen any. The original plan called for the west side of Farley to become retail, but that died long ago. There are only a couple renders that do exist at all, seeing as this whole process is so protracted. Keep in mind that while the moat is more or less at street level on 8th ave, it's 20 ft or so below 9th ave.

I do think I saw something once in an old Amtrak document that suggests they'd replace a lot of the moat floor with skylights, lighting the concourse below. Seems like that would make the most sense.

"process is protracted" is a good description. Amtrak/PANYNJ also seems to a lousy job of outreach to the public via the web, compared to the MTA/MTA-CC. One person who might be worthwhile pinging is this person:
Petra Todorovich Messick
Senior Officer, Outreach & Communications
NEC Infrastructure & Investment Development
212.630.7030 | petra.messick@amtrak.com

The holes in the moat further west from 8th Ave might actually be for the fan plant/vent upgrades that are part of the this-time-for-sure Phase I upgrade. Note that I think they repartitioned the work & put out a portion of the work for bid only earlier this year.
I assume part of the reasons for the vent upgrade is that the Manhattan West overbuild will block the natural air exchange at the west/9th Ave end of Farley. This is a snip from GPPAttachment A, a 2010 document. Note the red dashed lines outlining 8th Ave for a rough scale for the scope of the construction changes.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3715/1...f8878036_o.jpg

Will this project lower my commute time to the city?

"new, greatly expanded and improved Penn Station"
 

NYC will NOT get a "new, greatly expanded and improved Penn Station" in this decade.
Nor, IMHO, with it get a new Penn in the 2020s.

The only thing it will get in this decade is west side of 8th Ave entrances through the basement of the Farley PO to a much expanded west end concourse below Farley.

The Moynihan Station in the original, east end of Farley, is an unfunded dream though politicians still mention Moynihan Station as though it's just-around-around-the-corner.

Note that there IS a reference to a vestigial, bowels-of-Penn St enhancement, in the MW 11-29-13 EAS. Namely this

"Where a pedestrian passage extending from the Eighth Avenue Subway beneath West 33rd Street to the west side of Ninth Avenue has been constructed, an entrance within the #development# shall be constructed that connects with such passage."

The Eight Avenue Subway is the divider between the small intestines (west end concourse) & large intestines (LIRR/Amtrak/NJTransit concourses) of the current Penn Station bowels. A pedestrian passageway from MW to to the 8th Ave subway under 33rd St is a connection to Penn Station, but I have no idea if even a formal proposal/study for such a structure exists...

No. They're not touching the tracks at all. Maybe if Christie didn't cancel the ARC project...

Not that it isn't a problem, but aren't many of the problems WRT to Penn's infrastructure located right below and around Penn?

Given the insane logistics, lack of funding and intractable political bullshit surrounding a potential redevelopment of Penn Station, I completely understand (and partially share) your pessimistic outlook. The thing you have to remember, though, is that the westward shift in the center of gravity in Manhattan (resulting from Hudson Yards and Manhattan West) is going to erode the conditions that have prevented a redevelopment of the station so many times in the past.

While many enthusiasts have dreamed of vindicating the destruction of the old Penn Station by replacing MSG for decades, there has never previously been a good economic justification for doing so. Hundreds of thousands of people come into the city through Penn everyday, but the vast majority just jump on a subway and immediately head to jobs in further north in Midtown or in the financial district, or go shopping on 5th Avenue or in Soho. This is obviously a massive over-simplification, but the point is that very few of the people coming into Penn Station are going to shop, work or live in the immediate, walking-distance vicinity of the station.

With people only using Penn Station as an internal transit hub (ie, not interacting with the area immediately outside of it), it doesn't make that much sense to tear down the surrounding structure just to make their subway change more pleasant. Economic (and thus political) forces mimic this reality. A new Penn Station would be a huge boon for development and local businesses in the area, but who is going to spend millions lobbying for it? The shitty bars and parking garages on 31st that people don't take the time to visit in the first place?

Thus the Dolans, with the crazy money they make off of MSG, have no competition to fight back against preserving the status quo. Likewise, both the increase in the tax base and the potential for air-rights sales (like those proposed in midtown east rezoning) that would accompany a redevelopment of the station don't presently appear sufficient to fund a project of that scale (although a recent study by Crains argues that such funding is presently a practical reality).

Here's why all of that is going to change in the upcoming decade: Hudson yards is going to do ten times more for the areas immediately around Penn Station than even the high line did for Chelsea.

Penn Station is in walking distance of the hipness of Chelsea/Flatiron while being a stone's throw from tens of thousands of lucrative office jobs in the new west side. The initial draw to those benefits will cause development that will only build momentum on itself, rapidly causing people working all over city to begin to wonder why they hadn't previously realized how convenient it would to live right next to Penn Station (which is a great commuting point to literally everywhere). Once that catches on, property values are going to go through the roof--we've seen how incredibly rapid development can happen in this city when an area passes the tipping point (look at Williamsburg ten years ago).

I don't see a world in which Jim Dolan can hold back the tides of development to preserve his heap-of-shit stadium in that kind of sea of change. The political forces will realign to follow this new, greater source of money, they always do. The air rights of the station will balloon in value, making potential funding sources more obvious. The public will be interacting with Penn Station and the neighborhood around it in a different way, and constantly questioning why MSG has to be where it is. When all of that happens, the vision of a new Penn Station will go from something only passionately followed in a subset of the community and on forums like this to something that the city as a whole views as, quite simply, an inevitability.

The engineering will be a mess, but that won't keep this project from happening once the public begins to digest just how valuable a new Penn Station would be to the city (look at Hudson Yards).

I know this sounds like a stretch, but think about how foolish it would have sounded in the 90's to suggest that we spend over 150M to build park space on abandoned rail tracks in the middle of the meat packing district.

Hard to predict the future a ~decade out
 

Thx. I think Amtrak's totally unfunded plans for Penn Station South & all that should have just been mentioned.

I'm not being pessimistic, just being what I think is a realist re timeframes. They are working on that moderate enhancement to the bowels right now, with completion scheduled in '16. Note that I think the fan/ventilation part of that enhancement is being partly driven by the Manhattan West platform overbuild blocking airflow.

Anyway, DeBlasio takes office in January, the 7 extension opens ~June '14, 10 Hudson Yards (South Tower) in '15.
IIRC the HY retail structure opens in '17 & the North Tower in '18.

If you look around in the later 2010s you'll have a FAR more accurate idea if a new Penn Station will get built above the bowels in the 2020s.

PS: Not familiar w/ the shitty bars of 31st street, but I have visited the bar in the LIRR level TGIF

Even if Manhattan West and Hudson Yards weren't being built, Penn Station would need a drastic overhaul. Aside from the dreadful aesthetics, it's already very overcrowded and poorly designed. All indications point to a considerable increase in train traffic to at least the end of the decade.

That being said, if even just the north and south towers are up by 2018, I'd imagine there will be a large increase in people going right through Penn to get there. Penn Station is already a zoo, but it's quickly approaching the point where it becomes a zoo with a few loose lions running around...i.e. a complete disaster.

WRT Penn as zoo: that's one of the reasons they have those pairs of National Guard patrolling. Keep in mind also that the upward trend in commuters through Penn should be relieved in 2019 when the LIRR ESA will start putting LIRR commuters to the East Side into ~GCT.

There's a difference between (many) needs and the many billions needed to fund an actual project. For reference, I think it's costing ~$250 million (& ~3 years) to put in two entrances through Farley, expand the concourse under Farley & upgrade ventilation.

All I'm saying, IMHO, is that anything major will not happen till the 2020s.

And I've been known to be wrong many times.

So basically this is WTC PATH Station #2? :slob:

Penn St is not the WTC transport hub
 

Not yet. Penn Station will remain an un-inspiring dump throughout the 2010s, as I've been opining, early & often.

The ONLY project funded (& underway) is that ~$250M to fund the Farley entrances, west end concourse expansion & improved fan/vent plant.

By the time that is finished in 2016, it might have some small utility for Penn Station commuters who work at 10 Hudson Yards, which is due to open in 2015.

I'd be VERY impressed if the expanded West End concourse looked like this:

http://esd.ny.gov/Subsidiaries_Proje...oncourseSM.jpg

Note: by the time the expanded West End Concourse opens the Manhattan West overbuild platform will have blocked virtually all the natural light (VERY little to start) that enters the track/platform area from the wet (render left).

To give another tidbit of how un-inspired/under-invested/whatever Penn is: the LIRR recently announced that they have !THREE! displays at street level entrances announcing departure info. This is important because departure tracks get changed quite often & this is a commuter RR
Late 2013 (11/21/2013), midtown Manhattan, busiest commuter RR in USA.
Note the anti-truck bomb?? bollards: they used to have a National Guard soldier & NYPD standing just inside this entrance (34th st) to the right (there's a little alcove):

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3724/1...7152e492_b.jpg

This other MTA photo shows no track numbers assigned yet for these early evening rush hour trains. These trains were probably sitting in the West Side Yard/"Hudson Yards", waiting to be flushed east to Long Island.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7432/1...feea5ea2_b.jpg
The Long Island Rail Road has installed a digital departure board outside its main entrance to Penn Station. For the first time, you can get your train's departure time and track assignment before heading downstairs into the station.

Photo: MTA Long Island Rail Road
These two photo & another here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/11000548733/

Moynihan Station Will 'Be Fit For Humans'
 

Old, but I liked the title and it describes what is ACTUALLY happening.

Looking west towards 450 W 33rd, the "33rd st connector" is just the passageway under the 8th Ave subway to get from the large intestine to the small (but getting LARGER!) intestine of Penn.
http://ny.curbed.com/uploads/untitled-1845.jpg

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/0...for_humans.php

[QUOTE=vkristof;6367187]Not yet. Penn Station will remain an un-inspiring dump throughout the 2010s, as I've been opining, early & often.
/QUOTE]

I may be mistaken, but I always assumed the real point of Moynihan was to get Amtrak out of Penn to do two things: give more room to the other commuter lines and accommodate increasing Amtrak patronage.

Tortuous: lots of agencies involved
 

[QUOTE=phoenixboi08;6367217]AFAIK, yes. That is NOT funded, and last I checked, would be what they now call Moynihan Phase II.

The actual funded, ongoing, ~$250M of work is what they are calling Moynihan Phase I.

The history of this is pretty tortuous, and it's difficult to figure out what "finishes" we'll be getting for the Phase I $270M.
For example will the expanded West End Concourse look like that WTC east-west connector clone I criticized:

http://esd.ny.gov/Subsidiaries_Proje...oncourseSM.jpg

That render is from the "New renderings of the future Moynihan Station!" page of the Moynihan Station Development Corp, yada, yada

http://esd.ny.gov/Subsidiaries_Projects/MSDC/MSDC.html

I'm just spitballing, but Phase II might be on the backburner because Amtrak has now been pushing their Gateway project for the last few? years.

The biggest (by far) chunk of funded Gateway is the $185M Gateway Tunnel Box being built NOW between 10th & 11th Ave.

If you want a rabbit-hole to go down, Amtrak's Petra Todorovich Messisk has supplied one here with Penn Station South, etc.

http://www.northplainfield.org/Press...013/Amtrak.pdf

Good luck!

EDIT: Yowza! There's a more recent Gateway presentation, by a different Amtrak person. Here's a teaser:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3772/1...b1b1787f_b.jpg
from Page 16:

The Gateway Program: Expanding Capacity on the Northeast Corridor

Drew Galloway
Northeast Corridor Infrastructure
Investment & Development
New York Metropolitan
Transportation Council
November 14, 2013
New York, NY

http://www.nymtc.org/files.cfm?theca...=Presentations

Oh snap, they'll have to so a lot of demo for that, won't they. I doubt that they could do that much work while still underpining the existing buildings. It will be a shame to see St. John the Baptist church go in particular.

Rabbit hole indeed. Holy crap. Apparently the lower level tracks are needed because the upper level tracks cannot be extended eastward (they cannot descend steeply enough to fit beneath the 6th Ave express tracks).

What a colossal waste of money... I hope a more sensible plan is reached. This could easily cost the same as two East Side Accesses.

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/8794/nkw6.jpg

A more sensible plan would include two or maybe four tracks on the lower level, reserved for commuter instead of Amtrak. The eastward extension would link into East Side Access at Grand Central. Commuters might need to continue on to Grand Central to reach their jobs, whereas Amtrak trains don't need two Manhattan stops and should continue to use the existing East River Tunnels.

I somehow missed that there would be such a huge lower concourse for the Penn South proposal.....shudder to think of the cost.

Demoing MSG and building a modern station would get them most of the way there. The massive inefficiency of passenger circulation and poor environment in the existing station slows down all operations and makes the riders miserable.

AMTRAK concepts are CONCEPTS and/or rabbit-holes
 

Amtrak concepts are concepts based hopefully on actual real-world-based studies. They are probably concepts that will NOT become realities/structures/etc.

Amtrak concepts can also be rabbit-holes to go down and explore, but wear a safety harness and always keep actual reality in mind.

Well, yeah. The actual reality of a cash-strapped Amtrak somehow acquiring and clearcutting a full 1.5 blocks of prime Midtown real estate, then constructing 14 new platform tracks on two levels? Ridiculous.

A new river tunnel is needed, and Gateway is a superior plan to ARC/THE because it links into the existing tracks at Penn. Anything past that is wasteful unless it adds new linkages (connection to Grand Central/ESA).