Gateway board takes last step to secure $3.8B for Hudson rail tunnel project

The Gateway Development Commission board took the last step Wednesday to secure a $3.8 billion federal grant, the final funding piece for the $16 billion project to build a new rail tunnel that will carry Amtrak and NJ Transit trains under the Hudson River into Manhattan.

The project will construct a new two-track tunnel that is expected to be completed in 2035. Then the exiting century-old rail tunnel that was seriously damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 will be rehabilitated. Equipment failures in the existing tunnel often wreak havoc for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders.

The board's move authorizing the commission to enter into the grant agreement with the Federal Railroad Administration “will cap off the massive effort to get the Hudson Tunnel Project all of the funding it needs to be completed,” said Alicia Glen, Gateway’s New York commissioner, Balpreet Grewal-Virk, New Jersey’s commissioner, and Tony Coscia, Amtrak’s commissioner, in a joint statement.

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“ Taken together with the major construction we’re seeing ramp up,” the commission “is earning its stripes as an agency with the capacity and drive to build the most urgent infrastructure project in the nation,” the statement said.

The federal share of the project is about 70%, greatly reducing what will be owed by taxpayers in New York and New Jersey.

As a way to increase public engagement with the project, the Gateway Development Commission has launched an EarthCam to provide a daily panoramic image of construction progress at the Manhattan entrance area to the new tunnel.

A similar EarthCam showing progress on the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel launched in April.

On the New Jersey side, construction is underway on a new bridge that will carry Tonnelle Avenue over the new tunnel’s entrance. Concrete form work for the new bridge’s abutments is beginning this week, the commission said.

And as part of the effort to stabilize and otherwise prepare the Hudson’s riverbed for tunnel boring, large floating cranes in the Hudson River have started work on a test cofferdam for in-water work, the commission said.

Sheeting and pin pile installation are also in progress.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Gateway board takes last step to secure $3.8B for Hudson rail tunnel project