Not enough daylight. Not enough space. Not enough track capacity. Not enough entrances or exits.

Even after hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrades in recent years, Penn Station still has more than its share of shortcomings. And, there are several competingproposals to address them.

President Donald Trump’s administration in April took over the effort to transform the 115-year-old station "into a world-class facility while safeguarding taxpayer dollars," a spokesperson told Newsday in a statement.

Hosting three railroads and six subway lines, Penn Station is the busiest rail facility in the United States. And the stakes are particularly high for the 140,000 Long Island Rail Road customers going into and out of the station each day, more than any other agency.

Former New York City Transit president Andy Byford, now a board member for Amtrak, which owns Penn Station, has been tapped by the federal Department of Transportation to lead the effort and evaluate several competing visions for Penn Station. Some proposals aim to create space by removing all or part of Madison Square Garden, which sits atop the station — and has an agreement with New York City to stay in place at least through 2028. Others focus on maximizing train capacity, either by adding new tracks, or by taking some away.

Two major questions — when work would begin on a new Penn Station and how it'd be paid for — remain unclear, and will largely depend on which proposal is chosen. Gov. Kathy Hochul previously estimated the cost of rebuilding Penn Station at $7 billion, but the Trump administration has said it wants to shrink the cost of the project, in part by leaning on "private sector expertise."

Here’s a look at some of what’s ailing Penn Station, and different proposals for a cure.

When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority opened its new East End Gateway entrance and exit at 33rd Street, sunlight shone down in Penn Station for the first time in decades. The $600 million renovation, largely completed in 2023, also raised ceiling heights and widened walkways.

But outside of the LIRR’s concourse, much of Penn Station remains cramped and dimly lit. Competing proposals offer different visions for a brighter, roomier Penn Station.

One plan, advanced by Hochul and the MTA, which previously headed the project, would remove much of Penn Station’s upper level, used by Amtrak and NJ Transit, to make for taller ceilings. It would also take over MSG’s mid-block taxiway to build a 100-foot-tall glass atrium with natural light shining down on a new 450-foot-long train hall.

MSG opposed that plan, which it says would displace a pedestrian bridge and disrupt the cooling system used for the ice on which the Rangers skate.

The Garden has expressed support for a competing plan from construction firm Halmar International, a subsidiary of Italian infrastructure firm ASTM, that would bring natural light and extra space into Penn by building a multilevel, glass-encased "podium" that would surround MSG. The space would include two large train halls inside — one mid-block and another on Eighth Avenue.

Despite serving more than 600,000 travelers a day — more than LaGuardia Airport — Penn Station can be hard to find for pedestrians at street level, and hard to exit for commuters rushing to work.

The various proposals for a new Penn Station all include plans for more plentiful, and flashy, passageways into and out of Penn. The Hochul/MTA plan would build big and bright entrances extending to the corners of the block on Eighth Avenue.

The Halmar plan would take it a step further by acquiring and demolishing the 5,600-seat Theater at Madison Square Garden to allow for a grand, five-story-tall entrance at the center of the block on Eighth Avenue, with a glass and masonry colonnade stretching the length of the block,mirroring similar architecture at the adjacent Moynihan Train Hall.

MTA officials have expressed skepticism over proposals to build a main entrance to Penn at Eighth Avenue, because most customers access the station from Seventh Avenue. Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti, who is working with Halmar on its plan, said that viewpoint "is not correct urbanistically."

"One of the things that we think is true of any great station in any city is that it’s a 360-degree building, that it works from all sides," said during a June 2023 presentation on the Halmar proposal.

Some visions for an expanded Penn Station aren’t satisfied with getting rid of just a piece of the Garden. They want to relocate the entire arena.

ReThink Penn Station NYC, a group that has long pushed improvements at the facility, working with the Beaux-Arts Atelier, an architectural design advocacy group, has offered three proposals to restore Penn to what it looked like before the original station was leveled in the 1960s so that MSG could be built on top of it. Under two of its proposals, Madison Square Garden would have to be relocated altogether. A third option would allow MSG to stay in place, but would re-clad the arena in a similar architectural style as the original Penn Station. 

Another proposal, by the Grand Penn Community Alliance, would build a new MSG across the street on Seventh Avenue so that an aboveground, classically designed Penn Station could be built in its place, with a massive, 604,000-square-foot single-floor train level and an adjacent park.

"That's probably the greatest difference between our project and everybody else's. We don't just transform the station. We transform the neighborhood and the city," Grand Penn Community Alliance executive director Alex Washburn said.

Although any proposal requiring the demolition and relocation of MSG might seem like a heavier lift, Washburn believes his proposal could be accomplished more quickly, and at less cost, than others, because his team would have free rein over the project site, instead of struggling to work around what's already there.

Proposals that require relocating Madison Square Garden will have to overcome the fact MSG officials have no plans to go anywhere. In 2023, New York City granted the Garden a five-year extension to continue operating at its current location.

Beyond aboveground aesthetics, several proposals include ideas to radically change Penn Station’s operation at track level. After being hamstrung for decades by limited tunnel capacity into and out of Penn, Amtrak’s ongoing $16 billion Gateway project, which will build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, and a recently commenced effort to completely rebuild two existing tunnels across the East River, means that in a few years Penn Station could handle even more trains each day than the 1,300 it does now.

One proposal, first pitched by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2020 and being considered by Amtrak, would add eight tracks to Penn by taking over the block south of the station, bordered by Seventh and Eighth avenues and 30th and 31st streets. The "Penn South" proposal, as it has come to be known, has met resistance, as it would mean displacing hundreds of residents and businesses.

ReThink Penn Station NYC says it’s got a better, if counterintuitive, idea for expanding the station’s capacity: Fewer tracks.

Its proposal would reduce the number of tracks to 12, from the current 21, and double the width of platforms, thereby reducing crowding and making it easier for passengers to get on and off trains.

"Streamlining operations is everything," Rethink Penn Station NYC chairman Samuel Turvey said.

Under the plan, railroads, including the LIRR, would reduce "dwell times" at Penn by adopting a "through-running" operation, where trains that normally terminate at Penn would, instead, continue on to stations on the other side of the two connecting rivers.

While developers debate the merits of Classical architecture versus modern design, some Long Island commuters question whether another major remodeling of Penn Station is even necessary, especially given the numerous upgrades made in recent years. They include the LIRR's concourse renovations and other improvements led by Penn's primary commercial landlord, Vornado Realty Trust, like the new pedestrian plaza on 33rd and the transformation of Penn's busiest entrance, on Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street.

All that work came with the usual prolonged inconveniences of construction, which some commuters aren't anxious to relive.

"I’m not one of those people that need all the glitz and glamour," Uniondale commuter Marvin James said while waiting for his train near the LIRR's new 33rd Street escalators. "As long as I can have safe travel from Long Island to Penn Station, I’m good. And a couple bathrooms."

MTA Board member Sammy Chu, of Plainview, said while "a sense of place matters" to many Penn Station visitors, the typical Penn Station commuters expectations are not "grandiose." 

"It's going to be trains running on time, the frequency of service, ... being able to get a seat on the train. These are the things that are going to be important," said Chu, who wants the MTA to stay involved in the plan to ensure its riders' needs are looked after. "Your goal as a commuter is to spend sub-five minutes at Penn Station. Your goal is to get in, pee, grab something to eat if you're hungry or grab a bottle of water, and get on your train as quick as possible."