Work continues on the Gateway Tunnel project Thursday, a day after President Trump said he’s going to terminate funding for the crucial piece of infrastructure for New York City.
Crews could be seen Thursday morning at Hudson Yards, one of five construction sites for the project, where a new rail tunnel will come into the city from the Hudson River and through 12th Avenue.
The workers could be seen digging up massive piles of dirt and maneuvering around a deep trench that’s being prepared for tunnel boring.
President Trump says Gateway funding is “terminated”
Gateway Tunnel Project officials insist construction will move forward, despite the president’s remarks. But $16 billion is now up in the air.
“It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday.
“It’s petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters, choke off our economy and kill good-paying jobs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded in a statement, adding, “It’s vindictive, reckless and foolish.”
The Gateway Project is designed to replace and expand the aging rail tunnels used by Amtrak and NJ Transit that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy. It’s a critical tunnel along the Northeast Corridor and was deemed one of the most important infrastructure projects in the country.
Construction had already been moving forward with federal and state funding in place.
The president’s stunning announcement came just two weeks after federal funding for the project and the Second Avenue Subway were suspended at the start of the government shutdown.
Sources tell CBS News New York that even if federal money is delayed, state and local financing can keep construction going, at least for now. Still, it remains unclear how long the momentum will last without Washington’s support.
Future of the Gateway Project
Experts say it’s not just a transit upgrade, it’s an economic lifeline for the nation. Some estimates suggest it could create hundreds of billions of dollars in economic impact.
“This program is of national importance. It represents the focal point of 20% of the United States GDP,” said Carlo Scissura with the New York Building Congress, which advocates for the building industry.
He warns that thousands of jobs are on the line if Gateway is derailed.
“You’re going to put a lot of people out of work. You’re going to shut down a lot of businesses. And you’re going to create a massive, massive bottleneck and infrastructure problem in this area,” he said.
Labor unions are also pushing back against Mr. Trump.
“All of a sudden saying, ‘We’re going to pump the brakes on it,’ that’s not how businesses operate,” said Mike Hellstrom, with the Laborer’s International Union of North America.
He added, “The tens of thousands of good union jobs, middle-class jobs that are going to be created as a result of this really multigenerational kind of project, and this administration just literally toying around with all of that? It’s un-American.”
It’s a project that commuters have long awaited, and some worry they’ll pay the price for what they call political retaliation from the White House.
“I think it’s a personal vendetta with the current president, and I think it’s foolish, especially considering he’s a New Yorker, he lives in New York and New Jersey, he knows how important this tunnel is,” one New York City commuter said Thursday.
“He needs to, like, realize that New York and New Jersey, it’s not Democrats or Republicans, we’re Americans,” commuter Joe Krall said.
