Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that the 34th Street Partnership's annual pedestrian survey counted nearly 70,000 people entering and exiting Penn Station at 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue. That's 1,154 people a minute!

Anyone who has witnessed the flood of commuters pouring out of Penn Station knows how urgently pedestrian improvements are needed. Tri-State has proposed pedestrianizing 32nd Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues (and changing the light cycle at 32nd Street and Seventh, which currently allots cars one minute, and pedestrians only 20 seconds.) Borough President Scott Stringer has suggested widening the sidewalks and striping bike and bus lanes on 33rd Street. Both of these suggestions are easy and low-cost and should be implemented now.

Neither of these improvements, however, will be enough to accommodate the 60% increase in ridership that NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak predict in the next two decades. As part of the Moynihan Station project, the City and the State must pursue a comprehensive pedestrian plan that includes, among other things:

• Dedicating two traffic lanes on 34th Street to Bus Rapid Transit (a project that is currently in the works at NYC DOT and NYCT);
  
• Reopening the Gimbel's Corridor, an underground corridor on 33rd Street between Penn Station and Herald Square;
• Widening sidewalks on Seventh Avenue from Penn Station to Times Square.