Two TBMs broke ground on September 28 for the first new tunnel under the Hudson River in more than a century that began on a slope under Tonnelle Ave in North Bergen, NJ with an official groundbreaking ceremony.
The TBMs will cut two pipes through the Palisades rock face, a major milestone for the Gateway Program. The Palisades Tunnel project is being carried out by a Schiavone-Lane-Dragados joint venture. “Getting to this stage reflects the hard work of everyone who helped bring the project forward,” JV project manager Francesco Chiappalone said at the event.
Once the first tunnels are dug to the banks of New Jersey’s Hudson River, they will be replaced by a second set of TBMs better suited to digging through the softer, less stable soils beneath the river. Work has already begun on the Manhattan side of the project, with preparations for a land access well and soil stabilization efforts on the riverbed.
The first of the project’s ten construction packages, a surface alignment project at the New Jersey approach, was completed earlier this year. Six other packages, including the Palisades Tunnel, are underway.
“The Hudson Tunnel project will finally address one of the key weaknesses in our region’s rail network, and the benefits will be felt for generations,” said New York Gateway Development Commission Co-Chair Alicia Glenn. “Starting tunnel drilling sends a clear signal: we’re getting this tunnel.”
Graphic courtesy of GDCThe twin Herrenknecht TBMs delivered last March are both ready to start drilling. They are single shield boring machines, with 28 ft. 8 in. diameter cutting heads with 500 ft. long gantry. Each TBM is able to place precast concrete liners in the tunnel bore around it as it goes, reducing the amount of work needed later to complete the tunnels.
It’s roughly 5,100 feet across the Palisades Sill to the Weehawken, NJ, exit shaft, and project leaders estimate the TBMs will advance about 30 feet per day, completing their journeys in about a year.
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“The Hudson Tunnel project is much more than a New York and New Jersey project, it is a critical investment in America,” said Tony Coscia, Amtrak GDC Commissioner and Vice President. “The Northeast Corridor is the nation’s busiest passenger rail line, and right now it depends on a tunnel that was built by hand a decade before the first commercial radio broadcast.”
Overcoming the federal funding freeze
The project has faced headwinds from federal officials, who have tried several times to claw back funding for the project. The most recent appeal to stop the funds about a month ago ended two weeks later, when the Trump administration reached an agreement to end its challenge in federal appeals court in New York City.
The administration had previously moved last September to freeze federal funds, prompting a slowdown and work stoppage on the project that threatened its schedule before funding was restored weeks later by court order.
“We fought and overcame the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the Gateway Project and today, that dream is becoming a reality, with state-of-the-art machinery operated by skilled union workers beginning its journey through the soil and rock below the Hudson to Penn Station,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said at the event. Other political leaders echoed that sentiment, with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) touting her time previously spent as a “tunnel-obsessed congresswoman,” adding that she will “keep fighting until this tunnel is built, so 100,000 jobs are delivered and millions of New Jersey commuters finally deserve the reliable service.”
Kris Kolluri, former head of the Gateway Development Commission who now heads both NJ TRANSIT and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, said that “Having led the [commission] during a critical period for the Hudson Tunnel project, and securing the largest federal grant for a transit project in U.S. history, I saw firsthand what it took to move this project from concept to construction. The start of tunnel boring brings us another important step closer to the modern, resilient infrastructure that our customers and the entire Northeast Corridor depend on.”
