Construction on a new rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey is back on track.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration on Wednesday morning released the remainder of funding that it had withheld since last fall on the project to replace a vital East Coast rail link<\/a> that daily carries more than 200,000 Amtrak and New Jersey Transit travelers across the Hudson River. Officials said they now have the $205 million needed to restart work as soon as next week.<\/p>\n Work on the $16 billion series of rail improvements on both sides of the Hudson \u2014 known as Gateway \u2014 ground to a halt Feb. 6, with the exhaustion of a line of credit that had sustained construction since last year\u2019s government shutdown. That\u2019s when Trump \u201cterminated\u201d federal funding<\/a> on what is billed as the largest infrastructure project in the country, forcing the project to also dip into its operating and capital funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s billions and billions of dollars that [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer has worked 20 years to get \u2014 it\u2019s terminated,\u201d Trump posted on Truth Social in October.<\/p>\n The release of $127 million of the $205 million that was owed to New York and New Jersey by the Trump administration arrived on the heels of lawsuits filed last week by the Gateway Development Commission<\/a>, as well as by both states<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis funding freeze was unlawful from the start,\u201d New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. \u201cWe took swift action in court, and now every dollar that was illegally withheld has been released.\u201d<\/p>\n The move also came one day after a rally at an inactive Gateway construction site<\/a> on Manhattan\u2019s west side, where Hochul, labor leaders and laid-off workers appealed to Trump to restart tunnel construction work, which had been active at multiple sites in both states.<\/p>\n The new rail passageway in the river is set to be excavated by a pair of massive tunnel-boring machines<\/a>, which are each as long as a football field and weigh nearly 1,700 tons. One machine had been set to be shipped this month, while another has been awaiting assembly in New Jersey.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t stop a project, start a project, start a project, stop a project,\u201d Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building Trades Council of Greater New York, said at the Wednesday rally just south of Hudson Yards. \u201cAnd you know what \u2014 President Trump, as a builder, you know this.\u201d<\/p>\n James and Jennifer Davenport, New Jersey\u2019s acting attorney general, filed suit in Manhattan federal court<\/a> against the U.S. Department of Transportation and others, charging in court papers that \u201cTrump is engaged in political retribution\u201d that left the livelihoods of thousands of workers \u201changing in the balance.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House and the USDOT did not respond to requests for comment, though a spokesperson for the Transportation Department said Tuesday that the federal agency is \u201cfollowing the court order.\u201d A federal judge last Friday ordered the administration to release payments to the Gateway commission.<\/p>\n Hochul said at the rally that Trump had burned workers who voted for him in last fall\u2019s presidential election, saying the people who have been building the tunnel have been \u201cstressed out\u201d by uncertainty.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has been a roller coaster: Am I coming? Am I going?\u201d she said. \u201cWhy is there so much chaos?\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, the Gateway Development Commission \u2014 the public authority created in 2019 to carry out the multiple projects that comprise Gateway \u2014 said it will \u201ccontinue to pursue all avenues to secure the full amount of federal funding\u201d for the project.<\/p>\n Approximately 70% of the entire $16 billion project is funded by federal grants.<\/p>\n