The $6.88 billion grant for the Gateway project includes constructing a new tunnel beneath the Hudson River parallel to the decaying North River tunnel, which is more than a century old and crumbling in the decade-plus since Superstorm Sandy flushed 3 million gallons of corrosive salt water into the tunnel. The connection as it stands today is a narrow, two-track underwater bottleneck, in what Amtrak calls the country’s busiest stretch of mainline train track.
” The existing tunnel is key for local commuters and long-distance train travel alike. “Traffic meltdown,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner told Congress last month when asked what would happen if the current tunnel fails. “There’s huge impacts across the region because there’s insufficient tunnel and bridge capacity… And many, many residents and travelers rely on this connection.