New Jersey Lawmakers Urge President Trump to Help Fund Gateway Program

The Northeast Corridor facilitates hundreds of thousands of commutes each day, but lawmakers are concerned a critical piece may be obsolete without federal funding. On Tuesday, lawmakers continued their fight for President Donald Trump to allocate funding for the Gateway Program, an infrastructure project that would rehabilitate a ten mile stretch from Newark to Pennsylvania Station.

In a press conference, New Jersey lawmakers addressed phase one of the project, which seeks to rehabilitate the Portal Bridge and Hudson Tunnel. Lawmakers gathered at Secaucus, New Jersey, in front of the century old bridge, as trains carried commuters to New York. It was built in 1910, at the same time of the Titanic. Now well over one hundred years old, the bridge exhibits problems closing properly, occasionally requiring maintenance workers to align it using a sledgehammer.

The Hudson Tunnel portion of the project includes the construction of a two-track Hudson River rail tunnel that will directly serve Pennsylvania Station, as well as fixing the serious damage Superstorm Sandy inflicted on the North River tunnel. Like the Portal Bridge, the North River tunnel was built in the early 1900s.

Jerry Zaro, a trustee of the project, gave context on the age of the tunnel, pointing out that it was constructed during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration.

“It was built at the time the Titanic was under construction, and we pray the tunnel doesn’t suffer a similar fate,” he said. “Fully thirteen percent of the New York City labor pool is forced to play transit roulette, betting daily upon whether two ancient slender tunnels will get them to work on time or back home to their families in the evening.”

Lawmakers also focused on the possible economic repercussions of the failing infrastructure. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said the bridges could impact 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), or production, since it would drastically affect the labor force of New York City businesses.

“Every day replacement of this span is delayed costs an estimated $150,000, but more importantly every day of delay also costs our commuters and our economy untold amounts of dollars and cents and sanity,” he said

Under the Obama Administration, the Gateway Program procured 50/50 funding, which the Trump Administration has since voided. Since its conception, the project’s price tag could reportedly reach 30 billion dollars in its entirety.

Murphy said New Jersey and New York lawmakers have worked to secure funding and advocated for the project.

“All of us here today have stepped up to the plate, now we just need the federal government to join us at least in the dugout and we will surely welcome them with open arms,” he said

Congressman Albio Sires discussed the meeting he and other advocates for the project had with President Trump. Sires said he and his constituents left the meeting confident, that Trump had expressed they were on the same page. However, the Federal Transportation Agency later downgraded its importance in a letter to the Port Authority, and Trump’s infrastructure plan would leave little room for the billions of dollars the Gateway Project would require.

In the question and answer portion of the event, Murphy said he was still optimistic the president will eventually fund the project.

“I believe at the end of the day, he and his team will get there because it is so obvious,” he said. “It has such a big economic impact on this region and this region is the most important economic region in our country