By GREGORY ZELLER //
Next stop, Grand Central Madison.
That’s the formal name of the 700,000-square-foot Long Island Rail Road terminal nearing completion below New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, along Madison Avenue between 43rd and 48th streets.
Governor Kathy Hochul officially pronounced the sprawling terminal’s name earlier this week, while simultaneously announcing that no-change train rides from midtown to Long Island are on target to begin later this year.
Promising to decongest overworked Penn Station and deliver what the governor’s offices called “era-defining LIRR service increases of 40 percent” during morning rushes, the modern terminal – featuring state-of-the-art digital signage, robust cellular service, WiFi connectivity, 25 retail storefronts and four new street-level entrances along Madison Avenue – crowns the largest expansion of LIRR service since the original Pennsylvania Station, and the East River tunnels feeding it, opened in 1910.
Clock’s ticking: Grand Central Madison’s lower level will be ready soon.
Although an exact date for Grand Central Madison’s service debut has not been announced, officials promise it will be this calendar year – and Hochul, who became governor during year three of the four-year, $11.1 billion infrastructure project – is already trumpeting “an exciting, historic moment for New York State, Long Island and the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority].”
“New Yorkers are just months away from being able to seamlessly ride a train between East Midtown and Long Island,” Hochul said Tuesday. “The largest new passenger rail terminal built since the 1950s will be a gamechanger for Long Island, allowing the LIRR to dramatically expand service, operate more reliably for commuters and [reduce] overcrowding at Penn Station.”
The opening of Grand Central Madison and the long-awaited debut of the LIRR’s much-anticipated “third track,” also slated for this year, both represent significant customer-service milestones for the MTA – accomplished through the teeth of the COVID-19 crisis, noted Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO and Chairman Janno Lieber, who applauded a logistics masterstroke.
“The MTA has worked hard over the past four years – including throughout the pandemic – to hold to the 2022 opening date,” Lieber said in a statement. “We reimagined project management … to avoid delay-causing conflicts, simplified the change-order process, empowered project managers and transformed an insufficiently detailed schedule with only 8,500 activities into 40,000 distinct items and activities that could be tracked and completed.”
