![]() ![]() ![]() The area around the Central Warehouse is seeing a limited revival as part of a brewery neighborhood, but is clearly in need of significant revitalization that a train station could bring. This wouldn’t move the station very far, of course, but it would get it across the Hudson and into an area with better transit service. The building, in fact, still exists, and it is quite stately: If I were given significant power to physically reshape the Capital Region (like, say, Nelson Rockefeller in the ’60s), where would I put the crown jewel of the region’s non-automobile transportation system?Īlbany, of course, once had the downtown station that the Cap’n and I both wish could still exist. The question of moving it may be entirely theoretical at this point, but it’s an interesting question nonetheless. So the location of Albany’s train station, not to put too fine of a point on it, sucks. Walking what should be a decent distance to downtown Albany or the Empire State Plaza requires crossing the Hudson on the concrete hellscape of the Dunn Memorial Bridge, itself a monument to highway plans that would have done irreparable damage to Albany had they gone through fully. CDTA buses arrive only four times an hour at most, and rather than coming into the station as originally planned they stop on the street outside, in a completely non-intuitive location. It is, however, exceptionally difficult to get to by any mode other than driving, despite being only a mile and a half from downtown Albany (if you don’t believe me, just read the comments on this Times-Union blog post). In Albany, of course, politics plays into everything the Rensselaer station is, to a large extent, one of the many fruits of that notorious porkmaster, former State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Amtrak and CDTA, which owns the station, are heavily invested in the current Albany-Rensselaer station, and moving it at this point would be a waste of relatively recently spent infrastructure dollars. This is, of course, an entirely theoretical discussion. If your goal is downtown revitalization, go for the train station! ![]() That should be a higher priority if your goal is ridership. ![]()
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