![]() They’ve been repairing the existing tunnel piecemeal. Without a replacement for that tunnel, they can’t close the existing tunnel to rehabilitate it. The main argument for the urgency is that the existing tunnel, which is 113 years old, was flooded with saltwater in Hurricane Sandy and has been deteriorating from the inside out. Every elected official from the Northeast says this is critical to maintaining rail service in the Northeast Corridor. Joe Biden is as supportive as he could be, but there’s no telling what a different president would think of it with a different Congress.ĭoesn’t New York desperately need the new tunnel? That could happen again under a different administration. It had been given highest importance in the Obama administration and was downgraded by the Trump administration. His administration downgraded the importance of the whole project. So what would happen with an administration that’s less committed than the Biden administration?ĭuring the Trump administration, President Trump stopped this project in its tracks. Senator Schumer has said there is enough money in the infrastructure bill to pay for the whole project, but it has not yet been earmarked specifically for the Gateway project. But the federal government has not yet committed to paying that half. The estimate is that it would cost more than $16 billion, and New York and New Jersey expect the federal government to pay half of that. The actual tunnel under the river, they have not begun to dig yet. What was announced on Tuesday was funding for a section of the tunnel - the section under the streets of Manhattan, where the tunnel from under the river would go on its way to Penn Station. It had already lined up its federal funding, and the crews had actually started digging. The last attempt to build a tunnel under the Hudson ended when Chris Christie pulled the plug on it, and that project was further along than this one is. ![]() President Biden says it will, and Senator Schumer says it will, but we have been down this road before. There’s still the big question of will this ever happen. What’s your assessment? What does this injection of money from the $1 trillion infrastructure package mean?
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