The Gateway Development Commission (GDC) says that the Trump administration has not been providing promised funds and that construction of the $16 billion Hudson Tunnel Project will have to stop if disbursements of federal funds do not resume in the coming days.
GDC notified the contractors working on the Hudson Tunnel Project on Jan. 27 that funding for construction will run out on Feb. 6. GDC’s contractors will spend the next two weeks winding down work at the active construction sites in New York, New Jersey, and on the Hudson River. As of Feb. 6, construction will stop until additional funding becomes available.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “Today’s announcement by the Gateway Development Commission is just the latest collateral damage of Donald Trump’s vindictive quest to hurt New Yorkers no matter the cost. 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. Make no mistake, the Gateway Tunnel is vital to the economy of this state and the entire region, and I will fight like hell to ensure it gets built.”
GDC CEO Thomas Prendergast said, “Over the past two years, GDC, together with our federal and state partners, have made significant progress building the most urgent passenger rail infrastructure project in the country. Since federal funding was paused in October, we have done everything in our power to keep construction moving forward as planned, but we cannot fund this work on credit indefinitely. Pausing construction is the absolute last resort.”
Of the Hudson Tunnel Project’s $16 billion budget, roughly $12 billion is funded by federal grants. The other $4 billion is funded through USDOT Build America Bureau loans to be repaid by the States of New York and New Jersey and by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
More than $1 billion has been spent on construction of the Hudson Tunnel Project to date. Since October, GDC has utilized available funding sources and credit to keep the project moving forward as planned while federal funding disbursements have been paused. GDC says it has now drawn down nearly all available sources and credit and can no longer continue funding construction without access to the project’s funds.
Pausing construction will result in the immediate loss of nearly 1,000 jobs. An extended pause would put at risk approximately 11,000 construction jobs on the current projects, as well as the 95,000 jobs and $19.6 billion in economic activity that construction of the Hudson Tunnel Project is anticipated to generate overall. It also increases the risk that the 116-year-old North River Tunnel, already a leading cause of delays that impact hundreds of thousands of riders, will shut down, severing the most heavily used passenger rail line in the country and leading to billions of dollars in lost time and productivity.
