Delays by feds added $300M to new Hudson River tunnel costs, official says [View all]

Years of federal government delays in the process to build new Hudson River tunnels have made the massive project more expensive, officials overseeing the project said.

The price to build two new tunnels under the Hudson River and rehabilitate the existing 110-year-old tunnels -- dubbed the Gateway project -- is now estimated at $11.6 billion, a $300 million increase over its last project estimate, said Frank Sacr, Gateway Development Corporation interim executive director. He announced the increase during the inaugural meeting of the new seven-member, bi-state Gateway Development Commission on Friday.

“In 2020, we did add back $300 million in cost, or $1 million a day,” he said at Friday’s virtual meeting.

That increase was blamed on an almost three-year delay in federal approval of a draft environmental plan for the project, which the Federal Transit Administration set a March 2018 deadline to complete. A drop in the project’s ranking by the FTA and a ruling that federal infrastructure loans could not be used for the local share of the project’s funding also delayed the tunnels, officials said.

Read more: https://www.nj.com/news/2021/03/delays-by-feds-added-300m-to-new-hudson-river-tunnel-costs-official-says.html