By: Ezra Ashkenazi
There has been a dispute for ages on who will fund a renovation of the rail infrastructure connecting New Jersey to New York. Recently, there has been statements made that point to progress on the project getting federal funding. Last year, the project was rated too low, and in a dispute on how much money New Jersey itself was going to pay, the project was disqualified from the federal funding grant program. One specific part of the Gateway project is to improve the transportation over the Hudson river. Right now, the Portal North bridge is crossed by 200,000 people and 450 trains everyday according to a Crain’s Business article.
The bridge needs improvements, for example, it often gets stuck when it splits in the middle to give boats beneath the bridge room, causing many traffic delays. In order to improve productivity in traveling across the Hudson, the project also wants to launch a new rail tunnel under the river. However, the funding for this specific project was also stalled as a result of funding disputes with the federal government. This slight progress is the furthest along the project has gotten since it completed design work, and received environmental approval in 2013.
The Gateway project as a whole lacked federal funding, as it was given a low rating, by the Federal Transit Administration. It was later disqualified from a key federal grant program even though the state of New Jersey put together 600 million dollars for the project. They needed to get around 811 million dollars from federal funding in order to begin working on this enormous project. Last week, acting Federal Transportation Administration administrator K. Jane Williams said that the New Jersey Transit, who is supervising this project, is “Making progress” in gaining the ability to fight for a higher urgency rating so they can receive the funding from the federal government.
According to a Crain’s Business article, however, “Democratic New Jersey Reps. Donald Payne and Tom Malinowski… along with fellow New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires wrote to Williams on Wednesday noting that those benchmarks have already been met.” So the progress is definitely more than what has been made before but the exact progress seems to be arguable based on who one would ask. Jerry Zaro, the chairman of the Gateway Development Corp., said, “Portal is ready to move forward and finally deliver 21st-century transportation for 200,000 daily passengers who will never again have to endure delays due to an ancient, moveable bridge,” All in all this project would help many get to their destinations faster and more effectively, we hope the funding is given as soon as possible.
