THE Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) has selected a joint venture of Tutor Perini and O&G Industries to design and build a new 4km elevated rail structure and three new stations to replace its existing AirTrain monorail peoplemover at Newark Liberty International Airport.
PANYNJ says that with this latest contract award it has now completed 80% of the procurement needed to deliver a new modern, reliable automated peoplemover.
In December 2023, PANYNJ selected Doppelmayr for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the new peoplemover and its vehicles. In summer 2024, engineering firm Stantec was selected to design the new maintenance and control facility and pedestrian connectors, and to decommission the existing AirTrain.
Construction is expected to begin in 2025, with passenger service scheduled to start in 2030.
The PANYNJ board voted to increase the project budget from $US 2.05bn to $US 3.5bn to meet an estimated $US 1.45bn cost increase resulting from a five-year delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which time costs increased substantially. Further inflation since then, and higher risk premiums assigned to large infrastructure projects, added to the cost.
The existing AirTrain peoplemover opened in 1996 to serve the airport’s three terminals, parking and car rental facilities, and Newark Airport station on the Northeast Corridor (NEC), which is served by NJ Transit and Amtrak. But the system has become outdated and unable to accommodate growing passenger numbers at the airport, especially after the opening of a new and much larger Terminal A in 2023 to replace the previous 50-year-old terminal.
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