NY-NJ Gateway Tunnel Begins Work With $3.8B Fed Infusion

NEW YORK CITY — A long-delayed rail tunnel project between New York City and New Jersey chugged closer to reality.

Work will officially begin soon on the Hudson River Tunnel, also known as the Gateway tunnel, thanks in part to a new $3.8 billion injection of federal money, said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Schumer announced the grant during a dignitary-filled event Friday on the west side of Manhattan that marked what he called "the light at the end of this tunnel project."

"Construction now begins on both sides of the Hudson," he said. "It’s all systems go. There’s no turning back."

The Gateway project is slated to build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and rehab the century-old North River Tunnel that sustained serious damage during Superstorm Sandy.

But the project faced years of delays, most recently under former President Donald Trump's administration.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who attended the event Friday along with Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, said people have been waiting 30 years for the tunnel project to go forward.

"But years of inaction, excuses, delays and the infighting are finally over," she said. "We're now heralding in a new era of working not against each other but working together to accomplish great things."

The entire tunnel project is expected to cost $16.1 billion.

Schumer, however, noted that the federal government will pick up roughly $11 billion of the project's cost. He said that will free up money for other projects.

And he said the link between New York and New Jersey moves countless people and good along the Eastern seaboard.

"If that artery gets backed up, then the heart of our national transportation economy would cease to pump, America would go into recession overnight, millions of people would lose their jobs, the George Washington Bridge, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels would be bumper-to-bumper traffic 24/7, pollution would increase," he said.