Owned by Amtrak Parking Yes; free Owner Amtrak Platforms in use 1 | Tracks 4 (formerly 8) Opened 1978 Rebuilt 2017 (Expected) | |
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Location 320 Central Avenue
Rochester, NY 14605 Line(s) Empire Corridor (Rochester Subdivision) Bus operators RGRTA routes 37/37x Clinton and 41/41X Joseph
Greyhound lines (planned)
New York Trailways (planned) Address Rochester, NY 14605, United States Similar Buffalo–Depew station, William F Walsh Regional, Buffalo–Exchange Street station, Rome station, Union Station | ||
Rochester is a station on the Empire Corridor (Empire Service) Amtrak line, located in Rochester, New York.
Contents
All trains currently use a temporary platform adjacent to the station building, meaning both eastbound and westbound trains must switch to the southern track. This can cause conflicts with other passenger and freight trains and lead to delays. The current station building in place is a temporary station until the new station is completed in 2017. The current temporary station does not have high-level platforms, meaning passengers must climb several steps to board trains.
Rochester is served by two trains daily on the *Lake Shore Limited, four trains daily of the Empire Service, and two trains daily on the Maple Leaf.
History
Rochester has a long history of train stations. The first major Rochester station was built in 1845 by the New York Central Railroad on Mill Street by High Falls.
In the 1880s the railroad tracks were elevated (having previously been at grade) and the station was relocated to the east side of the Genesee River close to the modern site on Central Avenue at St. Paul Street.
That station would be demolished and replaced in 1914 at the modern site by the more famous New York Central station designed by Claude Fayette Bragdon. At the time the city of Rochester had four major train stations, The New York Central station, the since demolished Erie Railroad Depot, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Station that currently houses Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and the Rochester terminal of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh Railway which currently houses Nick Tahou Hots. The station often referred to as Bragdon Station was four storeys with three high arching windows reminiscent of train driving wheels and a main room that was reminiscent of New York’s Grand Central Terminal complete with arched ceilings and a lunch counter. The station was seen as one of Bragdon's greatest architectural accomplishments. As was the case with several large union stations of the era with falling revenues and high maintenance costs and taxes of such a large facility the station was sold by the New York Central Railroad in 1959 to a private owner.
In a move that is largely considered today to have been a mistake the famed 1914 station was mostly demolished in 1965 after the sale to private owners except for the run down westernmost portion which served as the station in the interim (with the ticket sales at the entrance to the passenger tunnel). That section was demolished to make way for the 1978 Amtrak facility, the period of Amtrak's Standard Stations Program. The 1978 structure was an Amshack style station that was long outdated by the time it was demolished in late 2015 to make way for the current station being constructed.
The passenger, baggage tunnels and platform canopy of the original 1914 building were the last remaining remnants of the previous 1914 station to survive. The tunnels, long forgotten were re-discovered during initial surveying work for the currently under construction station. During construction of the new station the tunnels were filled in as part of the construction of a new tunnel for the station, the westernmost part of the canopy remains.
Future
The construction of a new multimodel transit center is currently underway set to be opened by 2017. The project has been allocated by The City of Rochester, State of New York, and Amtrak US$26.5 million (later US$29.5 million) for construction, and broke ground on October 28, 2014. The new two floor station is being designed to look like the original 1914 station and will have a high-level center island platform serving two tracks in each direction for Amtrak with two others on either side in each direction for freight traffic to pass by. The platform will be connected to the station building via a tunnel underneath the tracks. The station will also contain a retail stand.
The new station will also allocate parking for Greyhound and Trailways buses, which currently stop at a temporary facility across the street, and will be built to accommodate the proposed high-speed rail service. Rochester's station, part of a rebuilding of the Empire Corridor is being built around the same time as a new station in Niagara Falls (completed in 2016) and an upcoming new station in Schenectady. The station is planned to open in the summer of 2017.
Station layout
The station currently has one low-level side platform on the south side of the tracks (a new high-level island platform is under construction).
Bus Connections
The station is across the street from the Greyhound/Trailways station and phase 2 of the new station is to include the buses.
RGRTA service includes the 37/37x Clinton and the 41/41X Joseph, both of which go to the nearby RTS Transit Center.
Immigration Checkpoint
In 2010 U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded the trains at Rochester station and asked passengers for details of their citizenship. At that time passengers who were not able to suitably prove their right to be in the U.S. could have been removed from the train and taken into custody.