Construction on a new rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey is back on track.
The Trump administration on Wednesday morning released the remainder of funding that it had withheld since last fall on the project to replace a vital East Coast rail link that daily carries more than 200,000 Amtrak and New Jersey Transit travelers across the Hudson River. Officials said they now have the $205 million needed to restart work as soon as next week.
Work on the $16 billion series of rail improvements on both sides of the Hudson — known as Gateway — ground to a halt Feb. 6, with the exhaustion of a line of credit that had sustained construction since last year’s government shutdown. That’s when Trump “terminated” federal funding on what is billed as the largest infrastructure project in the country, forcing the project to also dip into its operating and capital funds.
“It’s billions and billions of dollars that [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer has worked 20 years to get — it’s terminated,” Trump posted on Truth Social in October.
The release of $127 million of the $205 million that was owed to New York and New Jersey by the Trump administration arrived on the heels of lawsuits filed last week by the Gateway Development Commission, as well as by both states.
“This funding freeze was unlawful from the start,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We took swift action in court, and now every dollar that was illegally withheld has been released.”
The move also came one day after a rally at an inactive Gateway construction site on Manhattan’s west side, where Hochul, labor leaders and laid-off workers appealed to Trump to restart tunnel construction work, which had been active at multiple sites in both states.
The new rail passageway in the river is set to be excavated by a pair of massive tunnel-boring machines, which are each as long as a football field and weigh nearly 1,700 tons. One machine had been set to be shipped this month, while another has been awaiting assembly in New Jersey.
“You can’t stop a project, start a project, start a project, stop a project,” Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building Trades Council of Greater New York, said at the Tuesday rally just south of Hudson Yards. “And you know what — President Trump, as a builder, you know this.”
James and Jennifer Davenport, New Jersey’s acting attorney general, filed suit in Manhattan federal court against the U.S. Department of Transportation and others, charging in court papers that “Trump is engaged in political retribution” that left the livelihoods of thousands of workers “hanging in the balance.”
The White House and the USDOT did not respond to requests for comment, though a spokesperson for the Transportation Department said Tuesday that the federal agency is “following the court order.” A federal judge last Friday ordered the administration to release payments to the Gateway commission.
Hochul said at the rally that Trump had burned workers who voted for him in last fall’s presidential election, saying the people who have been building the tunnel have been “stressed out” by uncertainty.
“This has been a roller coaster: Am I coming? Am I going?” she said. “Why is there so much chaos?”
In a statement, the Gateway Development Commission — the public authority created in 2019 to carry out the multiple projects that comprise Gateway — said it will “continue to pursue all avenues to secure the full amount of federal funding” for the project.
Approximately 70% of the entire $16 billion project is funded by federal grants.
In all, it consists of 10 different construction projects along a 10-mile stretch between Newark Penn Station and New York Penn Station, which make up the busiest section of the Northeast Corridor, the passenger rail line running between Boston and Washington D.C.
“We are working with our contractors to deploy these funds to resume work as soon as possible,” the Gateway Development Commission said in a statement. “Letters will be sent to contractors today and construction activities are expected to resume next week.”
The head of the New York Building Congress, which represents the building and construction industry, said it was “silly” that lawsuits were needed to get Gateway going again.
“Let’s avoid any more costly and ridiculous interruptions by taking the politics out of what will be one of the most impactful infrastructure projects the country has ever seen,” said Carlo Scissura, president and chief executive of the building congress. “We look forward to seeing thousands of working-class union laborers back on the job next week doing what they’re meant to do.”
But Hochul, who said she made several phone calls to Trump about Gateway, conceded Tuesday that there is “not a lot of trust right now,” adding that she is nervous because “we’re always going to be worried about whether or not the money’s going to be there.”
A day later she took to social media to mark the latest step in the Gateway saga as a “major win for workers and commuters.”
In a later statement, Hochul said the project needs assurances from Trump that the project can be fully funded.
“Today’s progress is significant, but we need certainty that Gateway funding will remain in place for the duration of the project,” she said. “The federal government has a legal obligation to fully fund Gateway, and New York will accept nothing less.”
