(Bloomberg) — The long-delayed Gateway project is making yet another change to the multibillion dollar program for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey in a bid to keep costs in check and speed up work.
(Bloomberg) — The long-delayed Gateway project is making yet another change to the multibillion dollar program for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey in a bid to keep costs in check and speed up work.
Instead of one big contract to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, there will be four separate projects for engineering and consultant firms to bid on, the Gateway Development Commission announced Tuesday.
The Civil Works portion of the Hudson Tunnel Project, which includes the excavation and construction of a tunnel under the Palisades in New Jersey and into Penn Station in Manhattan, will be split into packages dubbed 1A, 1B, 1C and Contract EA1. Most are expected to start work in 2024, according to the commission.
The start of major construction for the project, meant to ease congestion in the New York-New Jersey commuting corridor, has faced ballooning costs as well as delays. The cost of the project has climbed to $16.1 billion, the Gateway Development Commission said in August — an estimate that is 14% higher than the 2021 projection. The start of major construction, once proposed for mid-2023, is now expected in mid-2024. A predecessor tunnel project was canceled in 2010 by then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
“The industry that will build the Hudson Tunnel Project advised us that the best way to ensure a competitive bidding pool was to divide up the largest, most complicated portion of the project into multiple pieces of work. We listened,” GDC chief executive officer Kris Kolluri said in a statement.
Kolluri expects the commission will be better prepared to tackle the full project by moving forward on the complex early work and making multiple packages for the tunneling.
Package 1A will include the portion of the tunnel through the Palisades to the construction shaft in Hoboken, 1B will feature the section of the tunnel going through the West Side of Manhattan under Hudson River Park. Package 1C, which is not expected to start until 2025, will include the tunneling under the Hudson River form the new construction shaft in Hoboken to the shaft in Manhattan.
The Contract Package EA1 will help derisk the full project by fortifying and stabilizing the river bottom on the New York side of the Hudson River.
President Joe Biden earlier this year praised the infrastructure project announcing plans to provide $292 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law to complete a critical early phase of the project. The tunnel project will result in 72,000 jobs.
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