Gateway Program Development Commission

Commentary

Final in a Series: An ROD From the Feds. What’s Next?

Throughout my series about the Gateway Program over the past two years, I have often noted changes in circumstances that could, or at least should, give Gateway proponents reason to consider changing the nature or the magnitude of its component projects. That recently happened with the project to start building two new single-track tunnels under the Hudson River.

Commentary

Part 7: A Misleading Analysis of Delays, A New Commission, and A New Obstacle to Funding

When we published the sixth article in this series last month, we promised continuing coverage of the Gateway saga. What we did not know at that time was that so much news would come to us so quickly. At a Board meeting of the Gateway Program Development Corp. on July 22, a Gateway spokesperson presented an analysis of delays that he attributed to the existing Portal Bridge and the existing Hudson Tunnels (also known as the North River Tunnels) on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC) and criticized the plan currently under way to rehabilitate the Canarsie Tunnels in New York City. Both analyses omitted facts that indicate that Gateway’s Hudson Tunnel and Portal North Bridge projects are not as cost-effective or necessary as he made them appear. Later that day, the Gateway Corporation became a “Commission” with questionable fundraising authority. Despite that change, a former offer by New Jersey Transit (NJT) to impose a surcharge on future rail trips to and from New York has been scuttled, raising the question of how New Jersey can replace the money that would have come from the surcharge.