Biden comes to N.Y. train yard with $295M for 1st part of Gateway rail tunnels

© Larry Higgs/nj.com/TNS In a lighter moment before President Joe Biden announced $292 million in federal funding for the Gateway Tunnel project Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker motions for Congressman Josh Gottheimer to join New Jersey officials for a photo.

NEW YORK — The $16 billion Gateway project to build two new rail tunnels under the Hudson River on the busy Northeast Corridor line got vocal and financial support from President Joe Biden on Tuesday when he visited New York City to announce a $292 million check for an early part of the project and pledged future support for it.

Biden announced the federal grant to Amtrak to finish the final section of the Hudson Yards’ “tunnel box” Concrete Casing, a project that was started in summer 2013 to preserve the route of the Gateway Tunnel from Penn Station to the Hudson River’s edge. The second part of the tunnel box was completed in 2016.

© Larry Higgs/nj.com/TNS Long Island Rail Road workers listen as President Joe Biden announces $292 million to fund construction of a piece of the larger Gateway rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York Tuesday that will be built near this Long Island Rail Road shop in Manhattan.

“This is just the beginning of finally constructing a 21st century rail system that’s long, long overdue in this country,” Biden said in a Long Island Rail Road train shop, where rail workers watched him from two catwalks. “It took some time ... but the bipartisan infrastructure law finally got it done.”

The tunnel box section being funded extends the final leg of it diagonally from 11th Avenue to 30th Street, part of that work involved relocating Long Island Rail Road utilities out of the path of the third section.

The $16 billion Gateway project to build two new rail tunnels and rehabilitate the existing 112-year-old tunnels has been pending since 2011. It took on greater urgency when a 2014 engineering report commissioned by Amtrak warned of the ned to rehabilitate the existing tunnels due to deterioration from river water driven by Hurricane Sandy into the tunnels.

© Larry Higgs/nj.com/TNS President Joe Biden announced $292 million to fund construction of a piece of the larger Gateway rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York Tuesday at a Long Island Rail Road shop near the tunnel site.

Train capacity would be cut by 75% if one tunnel is shut down for a year to rehabilitate, Amtrak officials said.

“We’re going to rebuild the existing tunnel. But we can’t do that until we build a brand new, different and separate tunnel,” Biden said, promising future funding. “We finally have the money, and we’re going to get it done. I promise you, we’re going to get it done.”

Biden appeared with what could be considered an all star Gateway cast, which included New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, U.S Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, both D-N.J., and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Tunnel box funding is from the National Infrastructure Project Assistance program, known as MEGA, which covers 50% of the costs of major construction projects of national or regional significance that otherwise would be too large or too complex to receive funding under traditional transportation programs. The program was announced last March and is funded through the Nov. 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“This is the first and necessary starting point of Gateway,” Schumer said of the tunnel box. “It is also one of the hardest parts of Gateway because it cuts through solid Manhattan bedrock to form the entry point of the two new underwater rail tunnels that are the centerpiece of the project.”

Several speakers talked about the fight to get to this moment and the efforts to keep funding for Gateway in the federal budget, which was opposed by former President Donald Trump unless a border wall was funded first.

Champions of the project point to transportation delays that have riddled the existing infrastructure.

Delays occurred on 54 different days in 2020 and were attributed to a variety of causes involving the electrical power, signal and track systems in the 112 year old tunnels, USDOT officials said. The tunnel is used by 450 Amtrak and NJ Transit trains daily.

For the New Jersey New York congressional delegation that fought to preserve Gateway funding, Biden’s announcement was like a victory lap. Booker took a photo of the New Jersey contingent before Schumer spoke. Biden named checked U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer for helping pass the the infrastructure bill, in addition to Booker and Menendez.

Biden’s remarks also took on the tone of a candidate as he talked about other infrastructure projects being funded across the country, including replacing a 60-year old highway Brent Spence Bridge, over the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers that had been stalled over federal funding and replacement of a 150-year-old-rail tunnel in Baltimore on the Northeast Corridor.

He also mentioned other New Jersey projects - reconstituting three miles of “obsolete” highway to the Port of Camden, and repairing Point Pleasant Canal and Cape May Canal, that he called “critical waterways for two communities that are gems of the New Jersey shore.”

The federal MEGA grant announced this week will reduce the debt load for both New York and New Jersey and make the project more cost-effective overall, said Thomas Wright, Regional Plan Association CEO.

This year is a critical one for the project to apply for Federal Transit Administration Capital Investment Grant funding, which started by applying to the FTA to accept the tunnel project in to the engineering phase. Officials also are looking at ways to reduce the project schedule.

Last August, Gateway Development Corporation officials said they’d seek additional federal grants through the Biden administration’s infrastructure law, which could decrease the two states’ shares and financing costs for federal infrastructure loans anticipated to be used for the local share. The GDC is a bi-state agency overseeing grants and construction.

A 2022 ranking that put building the Gateway Tunnel among the top priority projects on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line. The ranking makes the project eligible for a $24 billion category of funds in the bipartisan federal infrastructure law signed by Biden a year ago. That could reduce the states’ shares, as well.

The new schedule anticipates a 2038 completion date, with new Hudson River tunnels in service by 2035. It also estimates a 3-year schedule for the full rehabilitation of the existing tunnels, which will be closed one at a time for construction, so that three tubes are in service at all times, officials said.

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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com.

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