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For decades, commuters heading between New Jersey and Manhattan have depended on a pair of rail tunnels built in 1910—and lately, those tunnels have been hanging on by a thread. Now, after years of political drama, funding fights and stop-start construction, work on the long-promised replacement tunnel under the Hudson River is officially back underway.
The $16 billion Hudson Tunnel Project, the centerpiece of the larger Gateway Program, resumed construction this week after a tense funding battle briefly halted work last month.
That pause came when federal reimbursements tied to the project were suddenly frozen, cutting off the project’s cash flow. By February 6, construction had stopped and roughly 1,000 workers were laid off. The Gateway Development Commission warned the shutdown could leave “empty construction sites in New York and New Jersey” despite more than $1 billion already invested in the mega-project.
New York and New Jersey quickly sued the U.S. Department of Transportation, arguing the freeze violated existing funding agreements. A federal judge ordered the funds restored and by late February, more than $200 million had been released, which let crews return to work.
“Hundreds of workers will return to GDC’s construction sites in New York and New Jersey,” said Alicia Glen, co-chair of the Gateway Development Commission, in a release. “This is great news for these workers, the hundreds of thousands of riders who take the train to New York City every day, and the entire region.”
So what exactly is all this drama about?
The Hudson Tunnel Project is essentially emergency surgery for the busiest passenger rail corridor in the United States. The new infrastructure will add a two-tube rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between North Bergen, New Jersey and Manhattan, just south of the current North River tunnels used by Amtrak and NJ Transit.
Those existing tunnels are more than a century old and were severely damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Yet, today, roughly 200,000 passenger trips and more than 400 trains a day still squeeze through those two tubes, making them a major choke point on the Northeast Corridor.
The plan is to build a brand-new tunnel first. Once trains shift into the new tubes, crews will fully rehabilitate the original tunnels, eventually leaving four functioning tracks under the Hudson and effectively doubling capacity.
Right now, the project still looks more like an enormous construction puzzle than a tunnel. Crews in New Jersey are excavating the massive launch box where the tunnel-boring machines will begin their journey toward Manhattan, while workers near Hudson Yards are completing underground concrete structures that will guide trains into Penn Station. Engineers are also working to stabilize sections of the Hudson Riverbed before tunneling begins.
If the schedule holds, the giant tunnel-boring machines will start digging later this year, with the new tunnel expected to open around 2035. Rehabilitation of the original tunnels would follow, bringing the entire project online by 2038.
In other words, the next time the phrase “Hudson River tunnel” pops up in the news, it won’t just be another PowerPoint promise. It will actually be a construction site slowly making its way beneath the river.