{"id":133070,"date":"2026-02-13T23:36:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/133070\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T23:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:36:30","slug":"feds-release-30-million-for-hudson-river-tunnel-project-temporarily-ending-funding-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/133070\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds release $30 million for Hudson River Tunnel project, temporarily ending funding freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty million dollars in federal funds has finally made it to the coffers of the Gateway Development Commission, the Daily News has learned \u2014 ending, for now, nearly five months of funding interference<\/a> by the Trump administration in the construction of the Hudson River Tunnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have received an initial disbursement of $30 million from the federal government and expect to receive the full $205 million in reimbursement funds,\u201d a GDC spokesman confirmed in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cConstruction remains paused for now, and we are working with our contractors to plan how to deploy these funds in the most effective way and get workers back on the job to resume some construction as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a longtime booster of the project, also confirmed the funding. \u201cWe eagerly await the rest of the money to be sent as quickly as possible so construction can resume,\u201d he said in a statement to The News on Friday.<\/p>\n

At a virtual court hearing Friday, attorneys for the feds told Manhattan Federal Judge Jeannette Vargas that at least $30 million in frozen funds for the $16 billion project would start flowing again by Tuesday \u2014 a timeline that was apparently expedited in the hours that followed.<\/p>\n

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nneka Nzekwu said that the federal Department of Transportation was \u201cworking hard\u201d to get the money to the tunnel project, in accordance with Vargas\u2019s order from last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first $30 million of the roughly $200 million that has been on hold since October was processed Thursday afternoon, Nzekwu said.<\/p>\n

AUSA Tara Schwartz added that the money now had to be processed by the U.S. Treasury Department, meaning the Gateway Development Commission \u2014 the bi-state body in charge of construction \u2014 won\u2019t get paid out until after the holiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cDOT has done everything it can to process those requests,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s now just with the Treasury Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorneys with the states of New York and New Jersey \u2014 which sued the feds over the funding pause earlier this month \u2014 expressed skepticism at the feds\u2019 explanation, prompting Vargas to order the federal government to submit a status report by Tuesday with updates on where all payments stand.<\/p>\n

The restoration in funding is the result of a temporary order issued by Vargas \u2014 attorneys for the feds are still fighting the states, as well as the GDC, in a separate case \u2014 over their claims they can hold up the funding.<\/p>\n

Funding was initially held in the early hours of last year\u2019s government shutdown, as the feds announced the project was not in compliance with a last-minute change to contracting rules. In the ensuing months, the White House variously claimed that the funding freeze was due to Democratic policy positions and to Schumer\u2019s personal support for the tunnel\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n

Trump even promised to restore the funding if Schumer would support naming Penn Station and Dulles International Airport for the President.<\/p>\n

Even with the $30 million in hand, it was unclear Friday when work could resume. Work on the tunnel ground to a halt last week<\/a> as the GDC\u2019s last line of credit ran out, and about 1,000 construction workers were laid off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirty million dollars in federal funds has finally made it to the coffers of the Gateway Development Commission,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,10,12,63,608],"class_list":{"0":"post-133070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-manhattan","11":"tag-manhattan-headlines","12":"tag-manhattan-news","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-county","16":"tag-new-york-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}