NYP: connecting from Amtrak to Subway (A Train)

[bsammon]

I'm travelling to New York tomorrow on the Pennsylvanian. It's scheduled to arrive at 4:50, and if it's on schedule (or early) I'm wondering if I can make the 5:01 A train.

Has anyone here tried to make a tight transfer from Amtrak to the subway? Are there any tricks I can use? Is it better to get off on the Moynihan end of the train, or the old(-ish) Penn-Station end of the train?

It would definitely help if I was well familiar with the layout of the train station. I make this trip a couple of times a year, which is enough for some familiarity, but not enough that I can plan/predict my walk from one train to the other.

P.S. Yes, I am aware that there are plenty of other trains after the 5:01. I'm not going to stress about this too much, but, if nothing else, this is an interesting thought experiment.

 

[jis]

Moynihan end should be fine to get to the A train which is at the 8th Ave. 34th St. station.

Truth be told, the old Amtrak concourse is about the same distance from the A train station as Moynihan Hall.

 

[SubwayNut]

If your arriving in the evening rush hour, the 5:01pm time for the A train is a super estimate. At least pre-pandemic, the only time the NYC Subway really followed its schedule was late at night, when it often didn't because of situations like trackwork or slow zones somewhere on he route.

The A train runs every 10 minutes or less (except every 20 minutes overnight) so unless you're going somewhere on the Lefferts or Rockaways branches (including for the AirTrain for JFK at Howard Beach, which from Penn Station your better off taking the E train to Jamaica to get to JFK Airport) see the departure tines as a gestamate and look at a real time arrival app, Google maps should now show this when you arrive.

 

[bsammon]

If your arriving in the evening rush hour, the 5:01pm time for the A train is a super estimate.

True. For best results, I'd want to use a real-time tracker app/website. I've found them pretty accurate in the past.

 

[Amtrak25]

https://jasongibbs.com/pennstation/
https://new.mta.info/document/9466
At around 5pm, the southbound A train runs every 4 minutes and the northbound runs every 6 minutes. W4th Street and 42nd Street are on the schedule.