NJ Officials Oppose Study About Repairing Old Rail Tunnel To NYC

NORTH JERSEY — Top New Jersey officials, along with NJ Transit and Amtrak, expressed concerns Tuesday about an independent report released this week that recommends ways to fix a damaged 110-year-old train tunnel under the Hudson River without waiting for a new "Gateway Tunnel" to be built.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and U.S. Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker responded Tuesday to the report, which was released by the Gateway Program Development Corporation and prepared by London Bridge Associates.

The state and transit officials said they're opposed to any plans to fix the existing tunnel that would disrupt daily service.

“The Hudson Tunnel Project is the single most important infrastructure project in the nation,” said Gov. Murphy. “The plan for this resilience project has always been to build a new tunnel, and once a new tunnel is complete to shut down the 110-year old North River Tunnel for a comprehensive rehab."

A press release from Murphy's office stated, "Many of the proposed activities present very significant engineering and operational challenges, which have not yet been validated. They must be carefully considered and evaluated to ensure existing service is not compromised in any way."

Officials are concerned about concerned about gaps in frequency for those commuting between New Jersey and New York City, including on weekends.

Murphy added, "While all project partners agree that certain rehab work can be completed on the North River Tunnel in the meantime, I am greatly concerned by proposals in this report that suggest more extensive rehab measures that could potentially interrupt the daily operations of NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak."

The construction of new tunnels would be part of the $9.5 billion Gateway Project, which was proposed in 2011 to replace the expensive — and ultimately canceled — ARC (Access to the Region's Core) transit tunnel project.

Sen. Menendez said, “I have been clear from the beginning that we need to both build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, in addition to rehabilitating the existing tunnel. While we all recognize that ongoing maintenance is necessary to ensure the safety and reliability of the existing tunnel, this work must be done so that it does not result in major, unavoidable service disruptions ... We are so close to having a president in the White House who understands the importance of Gateway, and we must stay fully committed and focused on completing the nation’s most important infrastructure project.”

NJ TRANSIT President & CEO Kevin Corbett said, "The recommendations in this report are highly speculative and require a much more detailed evaluation before declaring them practicable. NJ TRANSIT will not consider any solution that adversely impacts service reliability."

“I have been opposed to the release of the LBA report all along because I don’t find elements of it to be credible. It proposes very simple, unproven solutions to very complex problems which have been 110 years in the making,” said Gateway Program Development Corporation Trustee (New Jersey) Jerry Zaro, referring to it as "Transit Roulette."

He said, “I find it utterly fantastical that the report suggests we can tear up old track in the middle of the night, change the grade of the track bed, lay new track, connect that back into the old track, clean up the mess and be ready for 200,000 rush hour commuters the next morning."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also expressed concerns.

Closure of just one of the two tubes would result in as much as a 75 percent reduction in weekday train service, according to Amtrak and NJ Transit.

Because of delays to the Hudson Tunnel Project, Amtrak has launched a program to identify and prioritize work that can be done on limited night and weekend outages now, to improve reliability of the century-old tunnel while they continue to work toward construction of a new trans-Hudson tunnel.

Got news or just want to reach out? Email caren.lissner@patch.com. To be the first to get news alerts with breaking stories in your town, or to get a free local newsletter each morning, sign up for Patch breaking news alerts or daily newsletters.