Penn Station Amtrak Departures Board To Be Demolished Monday

CHELSEA, NY — Nearly 10 million people catch Amtrak trains from New York's Penn Station to destinations across the United States each year. But with the large mass of riders congregating around one centrally-located, analog departures board it could sometimes seem like you were sandwiched between 10 million people waiting for the train on any given day.

But on Monday, it's time to say goodbye to that lumbering, clickity-clacking departures board. The 10-foot-high display in the center of Penn Station will be taken down and replaced starting at 10 p.m., PIX11 reported.

Workers will start breaking down the 10-foot-high departures board and start installing a new, more high-tech, display system throughout the station. The new display system will consist of more display boards spread throughout the station in order to improve traffic flow through the center of the station, an Amtrak spokesperson told Patch in August.

Amtrak told Patch they will be adding 13 gate boards with visual messaging, nine large departure boards with visual messaging and station announcements, four video walls with departure information and 10 medium-sized departure boards with visual messaging and new medium-sized arrival boards as well. In other words, there will be a whole lot of new video screens for a waiting area badly in need of a technological upgrade.

"The idea is to improve the passenger experience through more dynamic, easier to read and strategically located information points throughout the concourse," a spokesman for Amtrak said in a statement to Patch.

Penn Station is visited by 600,000 total passengers passing through it each day, making it the busiest transportation hub in the country.

Photo of old Amtrak display board by Alan Turkus via Flickr/Creative Commons