Through-Running and Regional Transit in New York: An Analysis of Legal Structures and Approaches

Over the past decade, a cottage industry of online and New Yorkbased transportation analysts and journalists has formed to answer that question, advocating for and debating options for improving regional rail service to the New York metropolitan region.3 Each of these analyses and articles share a common theme: a critique of New York's regional transit system as inadequate, outdated, and non-conforming to best practices adopted by modern transit agencies across the world. [...]some through-running proposals would require a new tunnel between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, an expensive endeavor.4 But each proposal is consistent in agreeing that through-running trains in the New York metropolitan region could reduce congestion and create additional capacity in stations, eliminate the need for trains to turn around in valuable urban space, and provide for the ability of consumers to get to multiple locations within and outside of Manhattan's midtown business district.5 Analysts are somewhat divided as to the viability of various throughrunning plans given technical challenges throughout New York's various transit systems.