The Hudson River Tunnel Project: A Gateway to Political Hell

Jake Bernstein ’29

With a population of roughly 8.5 million people (not including commuters), New York City (NYC) needs infrastructure to get people and cargo around. With three major airports in the tristate area, the fourth largest shipping port, the main bus terminal, and the two of the busiest train stations in the country, you would think NYC is well covered when it comes to transportation. But in reality, the fragile system of transportation is a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment, leaving utter havoc and devastation in its wake. 

Opening in late November 1910, a hundred years and one day before I was born, Penn Station was built for, by, and was named after the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in an effort to have trains that ran directly into NYC. Connecting this huge station to the railroad line in NJ was a single two-tube tunnel, tasked with getting passenger trains to and from the station in Midtown Manhattan. Engineered by Charles M. Jacobs and using a shield tunneling method that involved hand digging inside of a huge metal cylinder as according to the Gateway Development Commission, the tunnel was built to meet the needs (and size) of trains in the early 20th century. Since then, things have changed as rail travel has decreased, but the services needed from the new Penn Station have all but disappeared. Now the ageing North River Tunnel deals with both the Amtrak and NJ transit (NJT) trains, which in turn deals with 200,000 passengers going through the tunnels each day. These trains now run at faster speeds and are larger than those that operated in 1910. This, coupled with the severe flooding and damage by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 have made it clear that these 115 year-old tunnels struggled to meet demand, as delays and backups are becoming more frequent. The tunnel faces concrete and steel corrosion, which affects electric power in the tunnels. This situation could become catastrophic if major repairs are not completed, yet those repairs cannot happen without an alternative tunnel to keep trains moving during the construction period. You might think that this solution is straightforward, but sadly, it is anything but. Plans for overhaul and replacement date back to the end of the 20th century, but all of them were canceled. A major one was the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) project, which was scrapped almost a year before the beginning of what would become the latest attempt to address an issue at the heart of New York Transit. With that said, let me introduce you to the Hudson River Tunnel Project, also known as Gateway. A gateway to what, you may ask? Well, we will see. 

The Gateway project is a plan to build a tunnel under the Hudson River to replace the ageing North River Tunnel that connects New York's Penn Station to rail lines in New Jersey.  Announced in the spring of 2011, Gateway calls for the construction of a completely new tunnel and the modernization of rail lines in Manhattan and New Jersey. Due to the incredibly complicated nature of the project, and the involvement of federal, state, and local jurisdictions, construction began in 2023, and tunnel boring is scheduled to start later this year.  The entire project is set to be completed in 2035. Building the tunnel will involve two 1,680-ton, 28-foot diameter tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to dig under the hard rock of the Palisades in NJ, along with specialized excavation equipment for use under the Hudson River. These tunnel boring machines have a pace of about 30 feet per day. The riverbed portion will include a cofferdam to secure the riverbed and will remove 50,000 cubic yards of hard rock while navigating wet, historic soil and existing Manhattan infrastructure, including the existing North River Tunnel. The total price tag is currently around $16 billion but can grow as construction progresses.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress allocates funds for everything that the U.S. buys, including tanks, hospitals, and underground rail tunnels. The president and the fifteen departments that report to him are then required by law to spend the funds as Congress wishes. For Gateway, the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) under the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)  is responsible for distributing the money, which makes up around 70% of funding for the project, which had been set aside by Congress. However, the Trump administration has decided to withhold that money that had been set aside by the Biden administration, which had already created thousands of jobs and is expected to create many more. It has been reported that this is due to political and ideological differences between the Trump administration and NY and NJ politicians, most notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The stated reason by the Trump administration includes reviewing contracts and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) involvement with the project. It has also been reported that the President requested that Penn Station in Manhattan and Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia be renamed in his honor in exchange for the release of funding. The state government of NY and NJ sued to have funding restored. 

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was holding funds unlawfully, which was upheld by an appeals court. At the time of this writing, the Trump administration has agreed to release funding, including $200 million already budgeted by congress for the project. Although the issue appears to have been resolved, it has shaken faith in the project as partisan fighting has reached a critical infrastructure initiative that is vital to transportation in the Northeast and across the country.