The Biden administration has advanced a $6.88 billion grant for the bistate Hudson Tunnel project, marking the largest federal transportation grant in history and moving the long-awaited project into the next phase of construction.
"We have to do this quickly because these are hundred-year-old tunnels," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the project's chief Congressional cheerleader, said Thursday during a press conference.
Schumer said he's brought President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to the project several times to help win the money.
"That's why we're rushing to get the money now, so we get it under a friendly administration."
A final funding agreement with the Federal Transit Administration and the Gateway Development Commission, which oversees the project, won't be signed until next year.
The project will build a new two-track tunnel under the river for Amtrak and commuter trains and repair the existing 112-year-old tunnel that was flooded and damaged in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy.
The price tag totals $17.2 billion, according to the White House. Current plans call for the federal government, including Amtrak, to cover 50% and New York and New Jersey to evenly split the remaining 50%. There are currently no plans to issue municipal bonds for the project, Pat McCoy, deputy CFO of the Gateway Development Commission,
The full Gateway program carries an estimated $40 billion price tag and is considered the largest in the country.
The $6.88 billion will be awarded under the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Grants New Starts Program awards, which goes to new or extensions of existing rail and bus rapid transit projects that cost $400 million or more. The commission applied for $6.65 billion and Schumer said the additional $200 million was to help cover rising costs.
The federal grant will allow the Gateway Commission to enter the engineering phase, which will move the project a "huge step closer to finally revitalizing and expanding this century-old piece of American infrastructure," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
The commission is separately applying for another $3.8 billion from Federal Railroad Administration's Federal-State Partnership program, which, Schumer said, "hasn't yet been awarded, to address any potential cost increases."
After years of delay, federal funds began to flow in January when the administration
The Gateway Program will rebuild and rehab rail infrastructure projects between Newark, New Jersey and Penn Station in New York City along the Northeast Corridor, the most heavily used passenger rail line in the U.S. that contributes 20% of the national GDP. First proposed in 2011, the program was stalled by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and later by President Donald Trump, who pledged to pull all federal funding.
More than five dozen potential projects are in various stages of the federal CIG pipeline, according to the White House. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated up to $23 billion over five years for significant transit projects. The law allocates $3 billion per year in annual appropriations and $1.6 billion per year in advance appropriations as a supplement to annual appropriations, according to the U.S. DOT.
