New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday batted away a proposal to rehab Amtrak’s deteriorating Hudson River tunnels before two new tubes are built — a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo raised the possibility.
Speaking to reporters at an unrelated press conference, Murphy said the proposal would make commuters “more miserable,” because it would require night-time and weekend service reductions.
“To me, it looks like alchemy. We need four tunnels under the Hudson and we need to do it in a way that does not disadvantage and further impact the lives and the experience of the commuters from New Jersey,” he said.
“Let’s build two new ones, as the plan has always been, and then rehab the two old ones so at the end of the day we have four tunnels, and we do it in a way where we’re not making our commuters any more miserable.”
Amtrak’s existing 110-year-old tunnels carried 150,000 commuters per week pre-pandemic, but are nearing their obsolescence.
The proposed new Gateway Tunnel is expected to cost $11.4 billion. President Trump has opposed spending federal money on the project, but President-elect Joe Biden is expected to be more receptive.
The rehabilitation alternative was vetted in a consultant’s report released Monday.
It is modeled after Cuomo’s intervention in the MTA’s L train project, which saw officials opt to rehab the Canarsie tunnel during night and weekend closures instead a months-long shutdown.
On Sunday, Cuomo accused Murphy and Amtrak of holding back the release of the study, arguing that building new tunnels and keeping the old tubes weren’t mutually-exclusive.
“We have a report that says they can be rehabilitated,” Cuomo said. “There’s also a desire by Amtrak and many people to build new tunnels, to have additional access to New York, which I think is a good idea. One is not the enemy of the other.”
Gateway Development Corporation Chairman Steve Cohen nevertheless insisted the two governors are on the same page.
“We are all saying the same thing: we need the new tunnels to add access but that’s a decade away and we don’t want the current tunnels to fail in the meantime,” Cohen said in a statement. “So it’s worth looking at whether you can rehab the old tunnels while you build the new ones.”
