THE Gateway Development Commission (GDC), the delivery body for New York’s Hudson Tunnel Project, has awarded a $US 711.67m contract to a joint venture of Skanska, Creamer and Sanzari to construct a portion of the new line in New Jersey.
The partners will construct the 2.4km New Jersey Surface Alignment (NJSA) section from Secaucus to the portal of the new tunnel under the Hudson River at Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen. The new infrastructure will connect the new tunnel to the Northeast Corridor (NEC).
Under the NJSA contract, the joint venture will build 1271m of retaining wall and install lightweight concrete fill to create an embankment located next to existing NEC tracks. A further 960m of viaduct will be constructed to carry the new connection over wetlands in the Meadowlands district, along with bridges over Secaucus Road and Contrail and New York Susquehanna & Western freight lines.
GDC says that the installation of track, signalling, and other railways systems will be part of another construction package, which will be awarded in the future. GDC says seven out of 10 construction packages for the $US 16bn project are currently in progress or completed.
Work on the Hudson Tunnel Project to build a second rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey was temporarily halted for several weeks at the start of this year after the withdrawal of federal funding by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). But funding resumed after a successful legal challenge by the states of New York and New Jersey.
“Awarding the contract for the New Jersey Surface Alignment is another important milestone for the Hudson Tunnel Project and further evidence of the momentum we are building across our construction programme,” says GDC CEO, Tom Prendergast.
“This construction package is uniquely complex because of the wide variety of work involved and location. It will require extensive coordination and careful planning.”
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