00:00New York's Penn Station gearing up for a renovation. The project involves adding train capacity, widening hallways, bringing in some
00:07natural light and expanding the concourse, which means it comes with a hefty price tag.
00:11Here now to report on the story is Bloomberg's Michelle Kasky. And Michelle, anyone who's been to Penn Station would
00:17not be surprised to hear that there's a need to renovate it.
00:20Talk about some of the benefits to passenger rail riders in this proposed overhaul because it's a $7 billion price
00:26tag. That is big.
00:27That is big. That's a lot of money. But this is a major development. Penn Station does need this overhaul.
00:36And it's the busiest rail station in the U.S. And people have been waiting for this for decades.
00:45The last renovation was in the 60s. And what so what the riders will eventually see are these wider hallways,
00:54a lot more light, especially like you were saying before,
00:56the natural light and a much bigger single concourse that they can move throughout rather than the sort of more
01:04individual specific concourses that are have low ceilings and narrow hallways.
01:10Yeah, it's it's always a mess when they post which track a train is coming in on because there's a
01:15whole bunch of people have to scurry over and run for it.
01:17That's right.
01:18I'm going to say Grand Central. I mentioned a seven billion dollar price tag. Who's going to pay for it?
01:22How long is it going to take?
01:23Yeah, that's that's what we're all waiting to hear about. It's it's roughly around seven billion.
01:29And what we're hearing is that in the next six months or so, there should be a framework in terms
01:35of where is this money going to come from?
01:38Amtrak officials have talked about how they really want to tap into as much as they can federal grants, federal
01:44loans.
01:45But they've also said that it will be important for New York and New Jersey and maybe even New York
01:50City as well to chip in here because it's those residents that will be benefiting from this new station.
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