NEW YORK | Penn Station / MSG Renovation

[NYguy]

Funding for final piece of Gateway in place...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/n...k-funding.html

$16 Billion Hudson River Tunnel Project Gets Final Green Light
An agreement for the federal government to pay for most of the $16 billion project means the long-delayed plan is “all systems go,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said.


By Patrick McGeehan
June 11, 2024

The planners of the $16 billion rail tunnel project known as Gateway said they passed the “point of no return” on Tuesday when the federal government told Congress that it would provide an additional $6.88 billion to the project.

The federal grant — the most ever provided to a mass-transit infrastructure project in the country — was the final piece of the funding puzzle for the long-delayed tunnel between New Jersey and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.

It gives planners of the sprawling project the green light to hire engineering and construction companies to start boring through a cliff in North Bergen, N.J., and under the Hudson River.

That work could begin as soon as this year and is scheduled to be completed in 2035, said Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of the Gateway Development Commission.

The Gateway project is the second attempt at building an additional rail tunnel to increase capacity and improve the reliability of train service between New York and points west and south. The existing pair of single-track tunnels is more than 110 years old and suffering from damage sustained by flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In 2010, work had begun to make way for a different rail tunnel under the Hudson that was known as Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC. But before signing a similar funding agreement with the federal Department of Transportation, Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey at the time, canceled the project and returned some money to Washington.

The federal government had pledged the $6.88 billion toward Gateway last year, but a detailed funding agreement that will include about $600 million annually in the federal budget had to be worked out. On Tuesday, Veronica Vanterpool, the acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, notified leaders in Congress that the administration intended to sign that agreement with Gateway in about two weeks.

Mr. Schumer said that the grant would increase the federal funding for the Gateway project to about $12 billion, about 70 percent of its estimated total cost. That total includes about $1 billion from Amtrak, which owns the existing tunnels and Penn Station.

The balance, along with any overruns, will be supplied by New York and New Jersey, Mr. Schumer said.