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Old 11-01-2011, 07:43 AM
 
Location: Philadelphia, PA
1,335 posts, read 1,650,280 times
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1. Union Station
2. 30'th Street Station
3. Grand Central Station
4. Boston South Station / Baltimore Penn Station (tie)


Union station absolutely blows me away with its amenities and its architecture.

30'th Street Station has a 'square' aesthetic to its art-deco that I like very much. Currently it is very clean with decent shopping, the area outside is being rebuilt as a park. Amtrak HQ is right next door in the Cira Center, so one could consider them part of the same complex.

Grand Central Station is one impressive building, and deserves to be #1 if we were judging by exterior architecture alone. Somehow the indise doesn;t grab me, and I've gone so far as getting a permit to photograph the place and spending an evening there.

Boston's south station is so Boston, smaller and less pretentious but somehow feeling very authentic. I'm not too thrilled with the idea of catching trains outside since Boston's winters are not so great.

Last edited by Dub King; 11-01-2011 at 08:55 AM..
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Old 11-01-2011, 08:54 AM
 
Location: NY, NY
1,219 posts, read 1,746,289 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MDAllstar View Post
Did the old Penn Station have shopping like Grand Central in NYC or Union Station in D.C.?
I dont know since I was born after they tore down the original Penn Station but Im sure it had plenty of shopping, more so then Grand Central today. When the original Penn Station existed, it had the largest indoor space in NYC.

The fact that NYers still get upset about this, 50 years after its been torn down, shows just how stupid it was to build that current monstrosity on 34th st.
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Old 07-26-2012, 07:39 AM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
13,674 posts, read 15,574,875 times
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This should really make this conversation interesting over the next decade or so. Union Station should definetly pull ahead of both Penn Station and Grand Central Station in the total package.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/919/171/...lan-201207.pdf
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:28 AM
 
300 posts, read 521,637 times
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Penn Station has to be ranked #1. It has more ridership than all these other rail terminals combined.
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:30 AM
 
300 posts, read 521,637 times
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After Penn, I think the order for the next three isn't really open to debate:

Grand Central is clearly #2. Much bigger, grander and busier than the rest.

30th Street is clearly #3, for the same reasons, but a rank below.

And then Washington Union Station at #4. Very beautiful, but much smaller and less busy than the first three.
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:32 AM
 
300 posts, read 521,637 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PatDJohns View Post
I dont know since I was born after they tore down the original Penn Station but Im sure it had plenty of shopping, more so then Grand Central today. When the original Penn Station existed, it had the largest indoor space in NYC.
The current Penn Station complex has more shopping today than Grand Central (maybe not nicer shopping, but definitely more). I assume the original structure also had lots of shopping.

But the purpose of a rail terminal is transportation. If you fill a terminal with Cinnabons and Starbucks, it becomes a less desirable space, IMO.
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Old 07-26-2012, 12:14 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles
5,861 posts, read 15,173,601 times
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Union Station is in a class above the rest imo. It might not be the busiest or have the most stores but it is the most beautiful and elegant of them all.
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Old 07-26-2012, 12:16 PM
 
Location: WASHINGTON, D.C.
163 posts, read 257,477 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pwright1 View Post
Union Station is in a class above the rest imo. It might not be the busiest or have the most stores but it is the most beautiful and elegant of them all.
It's the second busiest in the country and it might overtake NYC someday.
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Old 07-26-2012, 12:28 PM
 
300 posts, read 521,637 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Uptkid View Post
It's the second busiest in the country and it might overtake NYC someday.
Union Station isn't close to the second busiest station in the country. That would be Grand Central. Union Station probably isn't in the Top 10.

I honestly have no idea what some people are smoking in this thread. Union Station probably doesn't have 10% of Grand Central's passenger traffic. I don't think they have close to Jamaica Station's or Newark Penn's traffic.

The entire MARC and VRE systems combined don't have the ridership of some individual commuter rail routes in the NYC area. Obviously the ridership volume is totally different.
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