Gateway Project Will Shut Down on Feb. 6 Unless New Federal $$$s Released

It’s quid pro quo time again in our winter of discontent.

Construction on the $16 billion project building new train tunnels under the Hudson River will come to a screeching halt next week if President Trump does not resume funding on the project known as the Gateway Development.

The project has already been approved by Congress but in October during the government shutdown President Trump said he would halt funding for the project, blaming Democrats and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer for the shutdown.

At the Jan. 27, Gateway Development Commission’s Board said that its cash reserves were depleted and the project would have to be halted on Feb. 6 unless new federal money was unleashed. The project employs thousands of construction workers building two badly-needed tunnels running from North Bergen NJ to Manhattan’s Penn Station under the Hudson River.

Jorge Sanchez, a union carpenter, died while working on the project last October when he fell 60 ft into a pit at Hudson Yards. About 10,000 workers will be laid off if new funding is not released.

The original two tunnels between the two points were finished in 1908 and were badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy 104 years later which hit the metro area on Oct. 29, 2012, killing people, destroying homes and damaging tunnels and transportation infrastructure. Much of the damage from the storm more than 12 years ago still has not been repaired.

The tubes carry 200,000 passengers on 450 Amtrak and NJ Transit trains daily.

Senator Charles Schumer, who fought for approval of the tunnels 14 years, spoke at the Jan. 27 Gateway board meeting.

“This makes absolutely no sense, yet here we are,” Schumer said “There is only one person who terminated Gateway and there is only one person who could get it back on track, and that’s President Trump.”

Federal Gateway money was appropriated during the Biden Administration, an $11.7 billion Federal grant for the Project, and an additional $4.1 billion in federal loans, to be repaid by New York, New Jersey, and the Port Authority of NY and NJ.

The Trump Administration stopped the project funding during last Fall’s government shutdown. Ostensibly, the Trump’s Department of Transportation’s said it was unhappy with the project’s minority and disadvantaged business enterprise program, which creates economic opportunities for businesses owned and managed by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals; this runs afoul of the current Administration’s view of DEI programs.

Governor Kathy Hochul, in a statement, said “The stakes are enormous: hundreds of thousands of daily commuters, 10,000 union jobs and billions of dollars in economic benefits all now imperiled by Donald Trump’s attempts to rip away infrastructure funding from New York.”

Later that afternoon, White House spokesman, Kush Desai noted after the board meeting, that Chuck Schumer and Democrats were standing in the way of a deal for the Gateway tunnel project by refusing to negotiate with the Trump administration. NPR reported that the Administration wants voting for full Department of Homeland funding in return for providing the fully allocated Gateway Project funding. Democrats are threatening to withhold funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after federal agents shot and killed two people in Minneapolis in January as part of its massive immigration crackdown.

The timetable for shutdown called for the complete shutdown of ongoing work on February 6, and will not resume until the Feds release $4.38 billion in federal funding that is currently obligated to the project.

At the morning meeting, GDC CEO Thomas Prendergast remarked “The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the most heavily used passenger rail line in the United States and an economic engine for the entire country. The corridor stretches from Washington, D.C., to Boston, moving a region that generates 20 percent of the nation’s GDP.”

Before the de-funding, it was expected that the new tunnels would open in 2035, and the rehabilitated original tunnels would be reopened three years later. The old tunnels cannot be refurbished until the new tunnels are available for train operation. The tunnels in place now are a leading cause of delays for riders.

Governor Mikie Sherrill noted angrily: “If the president does not restore funding to this project, which I helped secure while serving in Congress, he will kill nearly 100,000 jobs and $20 billion in economic activity.”

With the U.S. Government funding bill and possible shutdown on January 30, authorized Gateway Project funds may take longer to be disbursed in this polarized political climate. The February 6 shutdown date is almost 14 years to the day when Gateway was introduced.