Fed Government to Pay $7B+ for NY/NJ Tunnel Project

A stalled project to dig new train tunnels under the Hudson River to connect New Jersey commuters to Manhattan for work recently crossed an important threshold and the governors of the two states agreed to split the state costs of the massive project.

NJ Gov. Phil Murphy and NY Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to evenly split their share of the $14 billion first phase of the project — known as Gateway, The New York Times reported.

But it’s not as if each state will pay $7 billion each. Not even close. The federal government is expected to cover at least half of the cost.

We don’t know for sure because the states had to come to a funding agreement before federal officials would entertain how much they’d pay for their share.

Neither of the two states specified how they planned to pay for their portions, although New Jersey did previously say that it would raise some of its share by issuing bonds. This project has been stalled for the four years of Donald Trump’s administration after he swore the massive infrastructure overhaul wouldn’t get federal funding.

The project had issues even before that, with then-NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, and then-NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, scrapped a tentative funding agreement. During all the political disagreements, the price tag was going up.

Only one year ago the project was slated to cost $11.6 billion.

While transportation officials, politicians and other transit experts say this project is needed — the New York Times described it as “among the most ambitious and important transportation projects in the country” — $14 billion is a lot to ask taxpayers to hand over.

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