7. Novice Users of Penn Station Number Around 30,000 People Per Day

A remnant of the old Penn station

As John Schettino pointed out, the novice user of Penn Station, the tourists, regional travelers, those that may only come to Penn Station “once in their life,” are the people we should plan for because confused users turn into lost resources. Robert Previdi, former New York City transit planner told The Star-Ledger in 2013 that he estimates novice users to number 30,000 people per day. Even if we work from a conservative estimate and say that 1% of daily users are novices in Penn Station, that could be around 6,500 people using the 650,000 user number.

Using this conservative estimate, Schettino estimates that 43 weeks of time are lost per year dealing with confused users. He calculates this using 5000 people x 15 second queries  = 20.83 hours per day. He also notes that some of the station’s security apparatus become dedicated to answer questions from lost commuters and that the indirect movement of confused users cause delays for the daily, experienced users and the occasional users.

Thus, even though the novice user is a small percentage of the total, “Novice impact is inverse to size of novice group,” says John, emphasizing the need to plan for this minority.