Trump’s Tunnel Vision Is Screwing Up a Hugely Important Infrastructure Project
It’s been one week since the new Portal North Bridge debuted to soothe the psychic pains of long-suffering NJ Transit rail commuters. NJ Transit wouldn’t be NJ Transit without at least one disabled train (just outside Newark) stealing some of the bridge’s glory on some first morning trips of the workweek. But with one track finished and one to go, that was a small price to pay for faster service on a 21st-century span over the Hackensack River, between Secaucus and Kearny, New Jersey, that can stay open for traffic at all times.
Gone are infuriating delays that took place, sometimes several times a week, when the ancient swing bridge—first put in service 116 years ago—had to pivot open for Hackensack River traffic while NJ Transit and Amtrak trains waited the boats out. When the bridge got stuck in the open position—which happened about 15 percent of the times the span had to open—railway workers literally had to take a sledgehammer to pound the offending components back into place so train traffic could move. The new bridge is 50 feet higher than the old one, so both boats and trains can carry on. About 200,000 passengers and 400 trains also make faster train trips each day. Speeds increased to 90 mph, up from 60 mph.
What’s this milestone all about? The new Portal North Bridge is tangible evidence of progress for the Gateway Program, the $16 billion megaproject to upgrade and replace the Northeast Corridor’s decrepit rail infrastructure between New York and New Jersey. Even David Fink, Donald Trump’s choice to head the Federal Railroad Administration, boasted about “smoother, faster rides with the opening of this new track,” in identical statements to NJ Transit and Amtrak. He added that “under Secretary Duffy, USDOT is focused on building big, beautiful infrastructure, and this certainly is one of Amtrak’s largest projects.”
No official estimate of the work stoppage costs has been issued yet, but the waste is already likely into ten figures.
Ironically, a few miles away, another Gateway undertaking has been hamstrung at every turn by the Trump White House. The Hudson Tunnel Project, a far bigger and even more beautiful infrastructure project than the Portal North Bridge, faces a stop-start funding crisis stoked by administration officials.
This project would dig a new two-tube tunnel to replace the existing North River train tunnels under the Hudson, which would then be rehabbed. It is arguably the most critical infrastructure project in the country—the tunnels are a vital artery in the Northeast, carrying about 200,000 passengers on some 400 trains every day, and they are falling apart. In addition to being 116 years old, they were also flooded with saltwater during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and badly damaged.
After years of agonizing and expensive delays, construction started under the Biden administration. But Trump’s Transportation Department keeps holding up monies in service of the president’s vendetta with his fellow New Yorkers—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul, among others—over alleged use of DEI and excessive catering to small businesses.
Last fall, the Transportation Department delayed more than $200 million in funding reimbursements for the tunnel. New Jersey, New York, the Gateway Development Commission (GDC)—the project overseer—and the Transportation Department all ended up in court. After construction stopped on four of five projects, New Jersey and New York sued and a federal district court judge ordered the disbursement of the money. The department appealed.
Two weeks ago, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the money must flow. The three-judge panel did caution that if the department’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling succeeded, future payments could be suspended and lead to new work stoppages.
Another federal judge, this time in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, dismissed a GDC breach-of-contract suit about the funding as moot since the money had been released. The GDC has yet to learn whether the court will order compensation for the February work stoppage.
Time is money, and further construction delays could push costs upward by billions of dollars. In a recent “Gateway at Risk” online forum hosted by the Regional Plan Association, a tristate research organization, earlier this month, Subash Iyer, a former Department of Transportation acting general counsel, explained that the Gateway Program funding—with the tunnel at its core—rests on four separate grant and loan programs.
Of the four pots of money, one 2024 Federal Transit Administration capital investment grant is the largest supporting the tunnel, at nearly $7 billion. This one grant supports about half of the total project cost. As long as a project complies with federal requirements, the Transportation Department must turn over those dollars to the commission.
These are reimbursable grants: The GDC assumes costs up front and then turns to the federal government to pay back those costs. But only a fraction of those costs is reimbursed at any one time. Everything had been fine, with funding flowing smoothly until Transportation Department officials decided to investigate if GDC was operating under “unconstitutional DEI principles” in its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program for “small, independent businesses, owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.” (The Federal Claims Court ruling that found the GNC case moot also noted that the department did not adhere to proper procedures in conducting the review.)
The GDC has had to pause awarding contracts. The commission had short-listed one set of qualified teams for actual tunnel excavation work in the Hudson and another group for the “surface alignment project” to facilitate connecting the Northeast Corridor rail tracks to the new tunnel.
No official estimate of the work stoppage costs has been issued yet, but the waste is already likely into ten figures. The Regional Plan Association did a “back of the envelope” calculation, and during the online forum, the group’s CEO Tom Wright said “a six-month delay would add something like $720 million to $1.34 billion” to the entire program’s final costs. But major engineering projects don’t thrive or get built on chaos. The commission and the states can’t move forward without the certainty that the funding—including dollars expected this spring as well as the larger pot of approved grants and loans totaling about $15 billion—will materialize.
The Portal North Bridge is one American construction project that has been completed on time and on budget. The second track is scheduled to open in the fall. Despite having legally appropriated funding, these whack-a-mole court cases have spread major doubts about whether the Hudson Tunnel Project can hit those same milestones. At this rate, simply completing the project would count as a victory.
The post Trump’s Tunnel Vision Is Screwing Up a Hugely Important Infrastructure Project appeared first on The American Prospect.