The commission at the head of the expansive Gateway program to update the rail link between New York and New Jersey awarded a major construction contract Thursday, naming the firm charged with tunneling beneath Hudson County to link the New York metropolis to the New Jersey swamp.
The Gateway Development Commission approved a $465.6 million contract with a joint venture consisting of construction firms Schiavone and Dragados, to dig a twin-tube tunnel through the New Jersey Palisades.
“This is a proud day for the GDC team,” said Jim Morrison, the commission’s chief technical officer, noting that the contract is the commission’s first to begin the work of mining new tunnels.
When complete, the 5,100-foot Palisades tunnel will connect above-ground tracks coming out of the Meadowlands in North Bergen, N.J., with a new cross-Hudson tunnel into New York’s Penn Station.
The actual digging is scheduled to begin by 2026, after work crews acquire two new hard-rock tunnel boring machines. It is expected to be completed by the the spring of 2027.
The board also voted to appoint former Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Selvyn William Fletcher as the commission’s inspector general.
The portion of the project involving the Palisades tunnel and the cross-Hudson tunnel — broadly known as the Hudson River Tunnel project — is the $16 billion centerpiece of the sweeping Gateway project meant to eventually double rail capacity across the New Jersey Meadowlands and into Penn Station, modernizing and expanding an aging section of the Northeast Corridor rail line.
The federal government has committed to funding nearly $13 billion of the Hudson River Tunnel.
The total project, expected to cost upwards of $40 billion including the Hudson River Tunnel, also includes the replacement of the Portal Bridge in Kearny, N.J., several smaller bridges in the Meadowlands, additional track capacity near Secaucus Junction, and an eventual overhaul of the existing, 1910-vintage tunnel into Penn, known as the North River tunnel.
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