The Chairman of the Gateway Program Development Corporation (GDC) has issued a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Secretary Elaine Chao calling for immediate completion of the environmental review and issuance of a Record of Decision to allow the Hudson Tunnel Project to go forward.

The project involves the replacement of the existing 108-year-old, one-track-in, one-track-out system that connects North Bergen, New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, crossing the Hudson River, with a 21st Century, reliable, resilient and safe tunnel serving 200,000 daily passengers, 450 trains a day and linking to 10-20% of the nation’s economy.

In April, Federal agencies including USDOT, agreed to establish a cooperative relationship for the timely processing of environmental reviews and authorization decisions for proposed major infrastructure
projects under the One Federal Decision policy established by President Trump in Executive Order 13807.

The GDC partner agencies submitted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project to USDOT approximately one year ago. In recent months, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) reviewed the EIS and turned it over to the Federal Transit Administration, another USDOT agency. Work on the EIS has again stopped, however, during the Federal government shutdown, which has been ongoing since 22 December 2019.

Without a Record of Decision, work on the next construction phases of the Hudson Tunnel Project cannot continue.