DESPITE the Trump administration withholding federal funding for months in late 2025 and early 2026, work is continuing on the core project within the Gateway Programme, a multi-decade project to increase capacity on the 16km passenger rail line between Penn Station in New York and Newark, New Jersey, which is used by 450 mainly NJ Transit and Amtrak commuter and inter-city services a day, carrying around 200,000 passengers.
The programme is a key part of improving services on the 735km Northeast Corridor (NEC) between Washington, DC, and Boston, via Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. The most heavily used passenger rail line in the United States, the NEC handles more than 2000 inter-city and commuter trains, carrying around 800,000 passengers each day.
A bi-state public delivery body, the Gateway Development Commission (GDC), is overseeing the centrepiece of Phase 1 of the Gateway Programme, the $US 16bn Hudson Tunnel Project (HTP). The HTP includes the construction of a new 8km twin-bore tunnel between New York and New Jersey and the refurbishment of the 116-year-old North River Tunnel under the Hudson River, which was damaged by superstorm Sandy in 2012. Phase 2 includes several smaller projects to increase reliability and efficiency (see panel below).
HTP hit the headlines last October, when it and the Second Avenue Subway project were placed under administrative review by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). The federal government stated that the review would investigate whether “any unconstitutional practices” were occurring within the projects after USDOT implemented a new rule that “race and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage that violate the US constitution” should be removed from the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) programme, which is intended to favour small businesses when awarding contracts for federally-funded projects.
The review effectively froze federal payments for the project. For a few months, GDC continued funding construction using other funding sources, but in early 2026, as alternative funding sources dwindled, it became clear that construction work on HTP was going to halt. GDC responded with a lawsuit on February 2, arguing that USDOT breached its grant and loan agreements with GDC, including the Capital Investment Grants (CIG), Federal-State Partnership (FSP) Grant, and RAISE Grant agreements, as well as Railroad Rehabilitation and Investment Financing (RRIF) loans. The states of New York and New Jersey filed a separate lawsuit against USDOT on February 3 to end the suspension of federal funding disbursements.
Nevertheless, GDC was forced to temporarily pause work on the project on February 6, with the immediate loss of 1000 jobs. Fortunately, the stoppage was short-lived and work resumed by the end of the month after US District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) holding that the states of New York and New Jersey were likely to succeed in their claim, and federal funding began flowing again.
Tom Prendergast, CEO of GDC, is philosophical about the political brinkmanship that threatened to derail the HTP when IRJ meets him in his downtown New York office on Cortlandt Street.
“We didn’t plan for a shutdown,” he says. “In fact, you can’t just shut it down, you have to wind it down, you have to secure the site, and the contracting community handled it really well, but we’re hoping we don’t have to do that again.”
Fortunately, the short-term closedown has not affected the delivery timetable and the HTP remains on schedule, with the new tunnel expected to be completed by 2035, and the refurbishment of the North River Tunnel due to finish by 2038.
“There is a distinct difference about the Gateway Development Commission, as compared with the rest of capital projects that get delivered in New York,” Prendergast notes. “We’re a sole delivery mechanism. We cease to exist when the Hudson Tunnel Project gets completed.”
Prendergast says that he has taken experience of working on projects in Britain, Australia and Canada to shape his approach to the Gateway Programme. “We’re focused on delivery, and we’re lean as an organisation,” he says. “GDC only has 68 employees, but we’ve got a consortium of three different engineering companies, and then we’ve got a programme delivery partner, which is also a consortium of consultancies, and they bring around 200 people to our table. We consider it to be the best of both worlds, because we can tap that expertise when we need it.”
Complex tunnelling
Engineering expertise is definitely required for the complex tunnelling through different types of strata between New Jersey and New York. “We’re using a total of four 152m-long tunnel boring machines (TBMs), two pairs of machines with different cutter heads for the single bore tunnels; one pair for the Palisades bores and the other for the bores under the Hudson River,” explains Jim Starace, chief of programme delivery at GDC.
He admits that many parts of the HTP are technically challenging, such as the Hudson County access shaft (see photos) which involves the construction of a 40m-diameter circular shaft, built using a slurry wall to allow the shaft to be excavated from within. “We’re also right inside a residential area, which means we and our contractors have to be very sensitive to noise and light pollution and we’ve put up a sound wall to help,” Starace says. “It certainly poses restrictions that challenge the project, but we are working closely with the local community so that we coordinate our work with them.”
A more unusual resident that requires special consideration for the HTP team can be found in the Hudson River, which is home to a protected breed of sturgeon. “We’re not allowed to disturb these fish between January and July, which would obviously severely restrict the work we need to do in the river to stabilise the riverbed,” Starace explains. To work round the issue engineers have built a coffer dam from large metal piling sheets that creates a temporary rectangular box inside which work can continue year-round. The coffer dam has a second use in protecting the worksite from the Hudson’s aggressive tidal flows.
On the eastern side of the project is the Manhattan Tunnel, which Starace describes as “very challenging” due to the unstable ground the bores will push through. A platform has been built on the bank of the Hudson to hold workers and equipment performing ground improvement work to strengthen the soil in the vicinity. This will be done using a combination of jet grouting and ground freezing. For the former, grout will be injected into over 1000 boreholes to stabilise the soil. For the latter, pipes containing brine are laid on the riverbed and cooled to very low temperatures to freeze the surrounding ground. Together, these processes are making the ground in this area firm enough for tunnel excavation. “Essentially it’s like drilling through a giant soil ice cube,” Starace says.
The technical issues are not the only hurdles facing the project team. “One of the big challenges is scheduling, as each part of the project is integral to the other, so everything has to be very carefully sequenced,” Prendergast says.
The HTP is divided into 10 construction packages (see panel below) and the first of these, the Tonnelle Avenue project, was completed earlier this year. It involved building a new road bridge, creating space under Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen for the first two TBMs to launch and connecting staging areas on both sides of the road. When the new tunnel is in service, trains will pass under the bridge. The first two TBMs, which each arrived in 96 pieces, are being assembled and tunnel boring is due to launch later this year.
Six further packages are currently underway. From west to east, the first of these is the 2.4km New Jersey surface alignment, which involves the construction of infrastructure to carry the new tracks from Secaucus to the portal of the new tunnel under the Hudson River at Tonnelle Avenue. This infrastructure will connect the new tunnel to the NEC.
The Palisades Tunnel Project involves construction of tunnel tubes on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and building the Hudson County access shaft, which will be used to remove the TBMs that build this section and insert the TBMs that will build the section under the Hudson River.
The Hudson River Tunnel Section involves building the new tunnel tubes connecting New Jersey and New York under the Hudson River, as well as stabilising the ground around a section of Hudson Bergen Light Rail line and constructing a permanent underground support system for a section of Willow Avenue Bridge.
The Hudson River Ground Stabilisation Project is removing obstructions from the riverbed and stabilising the soft riverbed on the Manhattan side of the Hudson River to enable the TBMs to excavate the new tunnels.
The Manhattan Tunnel Project involves building the section of new tunnel under West 30th Street and creating a controlled pathway for the TBMs under 12th Avenue, as well as the construction of the 12th Avenue access shaft for the removal of the TBMs.
The Hudson Yards Concrete Casing (section 3) is completing the rail right-of-way beneath Hudson Yards, which will connect the new tunnel with Penn station. The first two sections of this project have already been completed.
Wider impact
With HTP still more than a decade away from completion, Prendergast is keen to point to the wider impact of the project, which will do far more than support more reliable and efficient train operations in the New Jersey and New York areas. During construction, a total of 95,000 jobs are forecast to be created and an economic output of $US 19.6bn generated.
Prendergast sees his role as a gatekeeper with a steady hand on the tiller who can step outside the project to retain an objective view that allows all elements to stay on course. “I’m a firm believer that you have to have somebody that’s not in the hen house, that is watching to make sure that scope, schedule, budget, change orders, disbursement of cash, everything is separate from the delivery of the project, and so that’s why it’s set up that way.”
Gateway Programme - other projects
- replacement of the ageing Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River with the new taller Portal North Bridge that will not have to open and close for river traffic
- construction of a future Portal South Bridge
- expansion and reconfiguration of Secaucus Junction, New Jersey
- replacement of the Sawtooth Bridges near Newark, and
- future expansion and modernisation of Penn Station (see panel below).
HTP’s 10 construction packages
1 New Jersey Surface Alignment - under construction
2 Tonnelle Avenue bridge and utility relocation - complete
3 Palisades Tunnel - under construction
4 Hudson River Tunnel Section -
under construction
5 Hudson River Ground Stabilisation - under construction
6 Manhattan Tunnel - under construction
7 Hudson Yards Concrete Casing - Section 3 - under construction
8 A-Yard and 10th Avenue Tunnel
9 Tunnel systems and fit-out
10 North River Tunnel rehabilitation.
Penn Station redevelopment due to start next year
LAST month, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), together with Amtrak and Penn Transformation Partners (PTP), a joint venture led by Halmar and Skanska, unveiled the designs for the redevelopment of New York’s Penn Station.
Produced by New York-based lead architect PAU, the designs reveal a safer, more spacious, and better-connected terminal, which PTP believes will elevate it to a modern civic landmark. Redevelopment work is expected to start next year, with completion expected by 2034.
USDOT took control of Penn Station’s transformation in April 2025 and provided Amtrak with $US 43m in federal grant funding to jumpstart an accelerated schedule. PTP was selected in May 2026 as the master developer, and USDOT has invested an additional $US 200m to support further design and planning-related work.
The completed station, USDOT says, will transform the commuter and visitor experience with a design that reduces congestion, eliminates dead ends, improves visibility, and expands waiting areas evenly throughout the station.
Key outcomes of the redevelopment include:
- construction of a grand entrance on Eighth Avenue to a new train hall
- replacement of cramped, decrepit walkways with open, well-designed concourses
- expansion of track capacity, including the introduction of at least limited through-running on the regional rail network
- provision of new retail space, better wayfinding, and other passenger experience improvements, while updating Madison Square Garden with a new cladding for a classic look, and
- improving the station’s existing subterranean structure.
“We named this project Penn Station Transformation for the exact reason depicted in these designs: a world-class, beautiful, and modern station is coming to New York City,” says special advisor to the Amtrak board, Andy Byford.
Major station
New York Penn Station is the busiest railway station in the Western Hemisphere and handled over 12 million Amtrak passengers in fiscal 2024, nearly 18% of total Amtrak and around 45% of Northeast Corridor ridership. The station accommodates over 1000 daily Amtrak, NJ Transit, and LIRR train movements on 21 tracks.
The Trump administration removed Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) from its role of leading the project in 2025, citing Amtrak’s ownership of the station as the reason for appointing the national passenger operator to lead the programme, a move it says will save taxpayers money.
