Secaucus Junction: the ghost of Penn?

With transportation, the unexpected is often a bad thing. But that wasn't the case on Sunday, March 18, when I encountered The Frank J. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus, New Jersey.

Seacaucus, New Jersey? Unexpected is right. I was taking New Jersey Transit into New York City (something I'd never done before) from Middletown, N.Y., which required changing trains at Secaucus Junction.

Well, so much for single-train service into Manhattan, which Metro-North offers into Grand Central from Westchester County and Connecticut. Still, I expected a simple change of trains at some dingy junction, maybe across the same platform if I was lucky.

What I got was a trip through the most ambitious train station in to be opened in North America in the 21st century.

Really. The station, which opened in 2003, features a soaring central atrium that sorts connecting passengers from no less than nine separate New Jersey Transit Lines. Some run north-south on the lines out of Hoboken, while others run east-west on the lines coming out of Penn Station in Manhattan.

The place is immaculate and inspiring. Coming up from the platforms to the atrium for the first time was actually exciting. Ahead, beyond the escalators and far above us, you could see a glass roof, which was letting sunlight stream into the cathedral-like space, so much so that it was reaching us down below.



Up we went, into the big space, looking for the next train to Penn Station. Clear color-coded signs and train indicator boards make this easy, removing the anxiety of an unfamiliar space and allowing one to enjoy the experience. Most importantly, I felt like I had arrived somewhere. And so I had -- at an important gateway, just one stop to Penn Station in New York.

How amazing to be in a new train station in the United States -- one with an interior on a scale at least equal to a suburban shopping mall!

And then I realized: what we had here was a worthy gesture to make up for the loss of the original Penn Station in Manhattan a half-century ago. We can't get the old Penn Station back (and the current one may never get remade), but Secaucus Junction, next station down the line on the Northeast Corridor, can at least provide a sense of occasion for some passengers about to enter one of the world's great cities.

Look around, and you'll see the Lautenberg station is one big tribute to the old Penn Station. You'll find the old Penn's distinctive "X" cross-bracing echoed everywhere - lamps and benches and gates and even as decorative patterns on the atrium's interior.




All right, this bench is a little too much tribute...


The platforms on the east-west tracks are clad in a faux exterior highlighted by arching windows that mimic the old Penn Station's magnificent iron-and-glass train shed and its barrel-vaulted waiting room. Here's the best view I could get of that vista, which faces the north (so no sunlight) and is blocked by a highway embankment.


Not exactly the same as the original, but you can sense the echoes:


And all that's ironic, too, because when the old Penn Station was demolished, much of the rubble wound up dumped in the New Jersey marshes not far from here. It seems as if the spirit of the old Penn Station has been conjured from the swamps and given a home in the Lautenberg station. So, in addition to elevating the spirit, the new place actually helps exorcise a certain amount of leftover societal guilt. And that's a good thing.

While what's left of Penn Station endures in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, the Lautenberg station stands in the middle of nowhere -- out in the Meadowlands, that curious industrial marshland west of the Palisades, home to mudflats and truck terminals and concrete pillars supporting the New Jersey Turnpike. How weird to close enough to the skyscrapers of New York City to see them catch the afternoon, but be standing in what looks like a New Jersey version of the Everglades.

I went down the escalators to walk outside, and found the station to be just that: = in the middle of impasssable marsh. Take a few steps out from a gravel employee parking lot, and you'd be lost in weeds taller than a man.


If nothing else, I understood the significance of the sculpture, Twenty First Century Cattail, that dominates the station's atrium. (I understand that at night, the cattails are illuminated in the New Jersey Transit colors of orange, blue, and purple.)


Why was this station built? Apparently the two lines crossed here at least since the Penn Station tunnels into Manhattan were opened in 1911, but the private companies then had no incentive to interchange passengers with competitors. As the 20th century rolled on, the government takeover of passenger service caused this mentality to evaporate, and in the 1960s the idea of creating a transfer station at Secaucus began to gain ground.

Prior to Secaucus Junction, New Jersey passengers headed to Midtown were forced to ride a circuitous route down to Hoboken, and then take a PATH train under the Hudson River to lower Manhattan, then up as far north as West 33rd St. at Penn Station. Allowing a change at Secaucus for direct trains into Penn Station would save a lot of time, and also open up plenty of other previously impossible connections, greatly improving the flexibility of New Jersey's commuter transit network.

It took years for the plan to percolate, but it finally found a champion in Frank Lautenberg, U.S. Senator from New Jersey and an ardent public transportation backer. In the 1990s, Lautenberg secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, and the new rail station began to take shape, both as a transportation hub and as a spur to development in the local area. In anticipation of its use, the station even got its own custom-built exit off the nearby New Jersey Turnpike.

I really can't address the political issues of any project such as this, especially one in New Jersey and involving this much concrete. However, I can say that the station really looks like it was designed for the day when it would be surrounded by a dense walkable urban community. It even includes a clock tower, cleverly incorporated as part of the elevator shaft.


But for now, it still stands in the middle of nowhere. A parking lot has been built nearby, but the surrounding area remains a grim place of rusting warehouses and chainlink fences and tidal marshes.

After the place opened, people complained that the $600 million station was underutilized, especially for all the money that was lavished on it. (They also complained of a rank marsh smell on the open platforms.) Transit planners countered with the idea that Secaucus Junction would prove crucial in the long run, in the same way that development would follow a highway exit.

Let's hope they're right, because Secaucus Junction is too good a station to become a target for public transportation foes. Like Penn Station and Grand Central, it was built not for expediency but for the ages. That it was built with public money rather than private capital is amazing for our day and age, so let's hope the long-term vision comes to pass.

In the meantime, the New Jersey Transit network has been transformed. Passenger counts have risen from just 4,500 a day in 2003 to more than 17,000 a day, making it the fourth-busiest on the N.J. Transit system. Secaucus Junction has also allowed the addition of train service to the Meadowlands, the big sports arena that also rises from the marshes.


And just passing through Secaucus can lift the spirits of public transportation supporters, because it allows you to believe that yes, it can matter somewhere in the car-crazed United States. Trains come and go every few minutes, complemented by all of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service, which doesn't stop but passes through the upper levels. (While waiting for my Manhattan train, an Amtrak Acela bound for Penn Station barrelled right past us at high speed.)