Rush hour in New York's Penn Station, city workers weave between flustered tourists along narrow corridors that all look the same.

As many as 650,000 people pass through here in a day.

But this intercity hub is outdated, overcapacity and unloved.

Now there are plans to pour billions of dollars into a station facelift in the hope it will attract

Americans back to trains. In this program, we'll hear about the romance of the old Penn Station.

And I want to show you this. This is the formal dining room. Everything was done with such a sense of occasion.

We'll explore the site of the planned demolition work.

This is just one building among another roughly 50 to 60 other buildings that would be demolished.

And ask key stakeholders if this plan is the right plan.

I'm Laura Heiton, so you're listening to Business Daily on the BBC.

The United States has the largest rail network in the world by far, more than double that of India.

But as a form of transport, it's rarely an American's first choice.

Now there are hopes that a major infrastructure project centered here,, Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan could help change that.

The new Penn Station in plans backed by New York Governor Cathy Hokel comes with costs running to a projected $40 billion.

It involves a station renovation, expansion and real estate development.

The Regional Plan Association is party to those plans.

I asked its chief executive and president, Tom Wright, to talk me through them.

It's already serving about three times as many people as it was ever designed to.

Growth has been going up dramatically over the last two, three decades. And so the plans are to try and simultaneously make improvements to the

regional rail system and improve and expand the station itself. There's also a wider sort of real estate development, isn't there,

around Penn Station? Can you tell me a bit about that? So the plan that's been approved by the

state would essentially double the amount of commercial office buildings in the blocks

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