Grand Central Madison is a commuter rail terminal for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the East Side Access project, the new terminal started construction in 2008 and opened on January 25, 2023. The station sits beneath Grand Central Terminal, which serves the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s Metro-North Railroad.
Grand Central Madison was built to reduce travel times to and from Manhattan's East Side and to ease congestion at Penn Station, the West Side station where all Manhattan-bound LIRR trains had terminated since 1910. The new terminal enables passengers to transfer to Metro-North's Harlem, Hudson, and New Haven Lines, as well as the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street station.
Services
The station serves the Long Island Rail Road's Main Line, which connects to all passenger branches and almost all stations. The initial service starting on January 25, 2023, was a shuttle, known as Grand Central Direct, to and from Jamaica station, with some trains running express and others making intermediate stops at Woodside, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens. Full service at the station began on February 27, 2023, with trains continuing past Jamaica to most branches.
Passengers traveling to and from non-electrified portions of the LIRR system (e.g., the Oyster Bay Branch or the Port Jefferson Branch east of Huntington) will have to transfer trains because the bilevel C3 coaches used in non-electrified areas cannot fit through the 63rd Street Tunnel.
History
Formal proposals to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to the east side of Manhattan date to 1963. In 1968, the 63rd Street Tunnel and a LIRR "Metropolitan Transportation Center" at 48th Street and Third Avenue were proposed as part of the Program for Action. After people living near the proposed transportation center objected, the MTA's board of directors voted to route LIRR trains to Grand Central by 1977. However, the LIRR project was postponed indefinitely during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis.
The East Side Access project was restarted after a study in the 1990s showed that more than half of LIRR riders work closer to Grand Central than to Penn Station. The cost of the project, estimated at $4.4 billion in 2004, jumped to $6.4 billion in 2006 and to $11.1 billion by 2017. The new stations and tunnels began service in January 2023.
In May 2022, the MTA announced that the station would be named Grand Central Madison because it sits under Grand Central Terminal and the "Madison Avenue corridor". The LIRR received operational control of Grand Central Madison on December 9, 2022, upon which the station and tracks became subject to Federal Railroad Administration regulations. The Grand Central Madison station's opening was delayed because of a single ventilation fan that could not exhaust enough air. At the end of December 2022, the MTA postponed the station's opening to January 2023. On January 23, an official opening date of January 25 was announced, paired with the first revenue service that morning. The MTA then announced on February 8 that it would implement full service on February 27. The Biltmore Connection to Grand Central Terminal's Biltmore Room opened in May 2023.
Station layout
The station has an area of , including for passengers and of retail space. There are 22 elevators and 47 escalators in the station; the escalator count exceeds the number of escalators in the remainder of the LIRR system.
Concourse
The retail and dining concourse, called the Madison Concourse, is accessed from street level or the Metro-North terminal via stairwells and elevators. It is located at the same level of the western part of Metro-North's Lower Level, underneath tracks 38 to 42 of Metro-North's Upper Level, and Vanderbilt Avenue. The concourse contains a ticket office, ticketed waiting area, nursing room, and customer service office under 47th Street. It also has restrooms, ticket machines, and retail spaces throughout the concourse. The only seating in the terminal is within the ticketed waiting area, which contains 29 seats; passengers can be fined $50 if they stay in the waiting area for more than 90 minutes. An MTA spokesperson said the rule was an extension of an existing restriction at Grand Central Terminal and that "a customer should not have to wait more than 90 minutes to catch their train, barring a significant service disruption".