For decades, many East Bronx residents have relied on long subway or bus rides to get to Manhattan. That is about to change dramatically with the MTA's Penn Station Access Plan, which will bring four brand new Metro North stations to the borough and transform the daily commute for tens of thousands of New Yorkers.
Jamie Torres Springer, President of MTA Construction and Development, described the project as a game changer. The new stations will bring commute times to less than half an hour and save approximately 30,000 daily riders about 45 minutes to an hour compared to their current journey into the city.
The four stations will be located at Parkchester Van Ness, Co-op City, Morris Park, and Hunts Point. Each is being built from scratch with fully modern technology, meaning every station will be ADA accessible. Torres Springer compared them to the most modern subway or train station you have ever seen.
Construction on the ambitious project began in 2020 and represents one of the most significant expansions of rail transit in New York City in recent decades. The stations will connect the historically underserved East Bronx directly to Penn Station in Manhattan, bypassing the need for lengthy transfers on the existing subway system.
The project addresses a long-standing transportation inequity in the borough. While other parts of New York City enjoy relatively quick rail access to Midtown Manhattan, East Bronx commuters have been forced to piece together multi-transfer journeys that can consume two hours or more of their day. The new stations promise to bring these communities into the same level of connectivity enjoyed by the rest of the metropolitan area.