Division A (IRT) | Structure Underground Opened 3 June 1917 Tracks 4 | |
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Services 1 (all times) 2 (all times) 3 (all except late nights) Transit connections NYCT Bus: M4, M7, M20, M34 SBS, M34A SBS, Q32, X17J, X22, X22A, X31 MTA Bus: BxM2 Academy Bus: X23, X24 Amtrak, LIRR, NJT Rail (at Penn Station) Address New York, NY 10001, United States | ||
34th Street–Penn Station is an express station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of 34th Street and Seventh Avenue, it is served by the 1 and 2 trains at all times, and the 3 train at all times except late nights. Connections are available to the LIRR, NJ Transit and Amtrak at Pennsylvania Station.
Contents
History
34th Street–Penn Station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line was opened on June 3, 1917, as part of an extension of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the dominant subway in Manhattan at the time, from Times Square–42nd Street to South Ferry. It was served by a shuttle train to Times Square until the rest of the extension opened a year later on July 1, 1918. This meant that the subway would be expanded down the Lower West Side to neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village and the western portion of Lower Manhattan.
As part of this and the northern IRT Lexington Avenue Line extension, the IRT network would be radically changed from an S-shaped line connecting the eastern side of Lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side to an H-shaped network with two parallel lines, the East and West Side Lines, and a shuttle at 42nd Street connecting them.
Station layout
Like 34th Street–Penn Station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line and Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center on the IRT Eastern Parkway Line, this station has two side platforms for local service and a center island platform for express service. This is due to the expected increase in ridership and to encourage riders to switch at the next stop northbound, Times Square–42nd Street, as it is set up in the usual island platform manner for cross-platform interchanges.
There is no free transfer between this station and the station of the same name on the IND Eighth Avenue Line, despite the fact that both connect to Penn Station. The nearest transfer location is at Times Square–42nd Street with a free transfer to 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Exits
34th Street–Penn Station spans three streets (32nd, 33rd, and 34th Streets) with a set of entrances/exits at all of these streets. For the purposes of this article, entrance and exit are interchangeable.
Ridership
34th Street–Penn Station on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line is continually ranked as one of the busiest stations in the subway system. In 2013, it was the fifth-busiest subway station, with 27,730,331 riders as recorded by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. By comparison, its sister station on the Eighth Avenue Line is ranked sixth-busiest, with 26,758,623 passengers. When the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line station was a shuttle stop before the rest of the South Ferry extension opened, ridership was quite low; in its first year of operation, only 78,121 boardings were recorded.