NORTH BERGEN, N.J. — Giant tunnel-boring machines have arrived for a new Hudson River rail tunnel project intended to move trains between Manhattan and New Jersey, as officials and a small team prepare for the next construction phase later this year.
At a work site on the New Jersey side of the river, James Starace, chief of program delivery for the Gateway Development Commission, described the effort as modern tunnel construction in which machines do most of the work while a limited crew oversees operations. Starace stood Tuesday in a trench cut into the hills across from New York City, where the project’s tunneling and excavation is expected to support a future tunnel designed to ease congestion on the region’s busiest passenger rail corridor.
Starace said the project includes a “fully automated, underground factory,” adding that about 40 people are expected to oversee a conveyor system that hauls away debris and equipment used to install the tunnel’s curved concrete lining. He said the work is planned to proceed with machines expected to take about a year to grind through the first tunnel section in the New Jersey Palisades.
Engineers said the Palisades section, made of tough volcanic rock, will see tunneling at a pace of about 30 feet a day once digging starts later this year. Hamed Nejad, the project’s chief engineer, said the tunnel-boring machines arrived “like Lego pieces” in nearly 100 different components, and welders were assembling cutterheads outside the tunnel’s future entrance.
When complete, the new tunnel would include two train tracks and run nearly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). The existing two-track tunnel under the Hudson River, which was damaged by saltwater during Superstorm Sandy, would be renovated as part of the overall Gateway undertaking.
Starace said workers are building toward a target year of 2035, when trains would speed in and out of the new tunnel. He framed the new tunnel as one of the largest U.S. mass transit projects in generations, using a larger-scale, equipment-driven approach than the century-old construction method that built the original tunnel.
The project’s pace has been shaped by federal funding decisions and litigation. The ambitious tunnel received key approvals and funding under the Biden administration, but nearly ground to a halt in the months that followed, when the Trump administration froze funding during a recent federal government shutdown.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance, said in a statement that America has grown unaccustomed to building projects at this scale, contributing to costs. Pearlstein said “What’s astonishing about Gateway isn’t the size and scope of the project,” but “that it’s taken this long to get only so far.”
As funding neared depletion in February, Pearlstein said the project’s timeline has been affected by a legal dispute over release of federal money. The AP report says a federal judge ordered the administration to release the funds, and money has continued flowing as a lawsuit filed by New York and New Jersey against the federal government plays out.