In the fight between President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over the $16 billion boondoggle Gateway Hudson River rail tunnel, being heard in federal courtrooms in New York and D.C., there seem to be two apparent outcomes to the standoff.
Option 1: Trump prevails, Gateway is dead and $1 billion spent so far is wasted. Option 2: Schumer prevails, Gateway is built as is (which produces zero new capacity) and $16 billion is wasted. Squandering a billion dollars is not nearly as bad as squandering $16 billion.
But there is a third option, where logic prevails. Gateway is modified to first repair the old 1910 tunnel immediately and construct a more economical new tunnel (without expensive and unneeded bench walls and cross-connecting passageways) and link it directly into Penn Station. Billions will be saved. It will be completed faster and passengers will have an improved network.
Taxpayers and riders lose under Options 1 and 2. Everyone wins, including all the politicians, under Option 3.
It can be, and should be, another Wollman Rink for Trump. Like Wollman, the project can be accomplished more economically, it can produce substantial improvements to capacity and it can all be completed more speedily. Trump can make it happen.
One argument, made by proponents like Schumer and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, is that the 1910 tunnel is at risk of failure from Superstorm Sandy damage in 2012. That is overstating it, as the tunnel is safe, but it could use a rehab and upgrade.
Under the current Gateway plan, those repairs don’t happen until 2040, which is cuckoo, especially if imminent failure is feared. Trump should insist that the 1910 tunnel be fixed immediately, using nights and weekends, as was done with the L train and as New York officials have urged for years. There is a whole report on how to fix the old tunnel, prepared by London Bridge Associates.
As for the new tunnel, slim it down by dispensing with outmoded technology that the rest of the world has abandoned like bench walls and, most critically, change the alignment of the tunnel. Gateway is now designed to bring trains into a new station called Penn South, which would cost upwards of $20 billion (on top of the $16 billion), requiring the demolition of Midtown’s Block 780.
Gov. Hochul has said that Penn South will not happen, and she is correct. So where will the new tunnel land? Tom Prendergast, CEO of the bistate Gateway Development Commission, asked where the new tunnel will bring trains, says that is someone else’s responsibility. He is just to build a new tunnel and repair the old one.
The answer is that the tunnel has to go to either Block 780/Penn South, a dead-end terminal or existing Penn Station, which can be achieved by through-running trains out the other side of Penn to either Grand Central or Queens and Long Island. But unless Trump forces a change, trains from the new tunnel won’t have anywhere to go. A monumental waste.
Work has stopped on Gateway with the U.S. money frozen by Trump. Under a court order, $30 million was handed over on Friday and a judge has requested an update at 3 p.m. tomorrow on the balance of the $205,275,358 that has been frozen since the fall.
Trump’s instinct that this is a boondoggle is correct. But attacking it on DEI grounds isn’t the right leverage. Trump’s Federal Railroad Administration last year revoked more $4 billion in U.S. money approved during the Obama and Biden years for the California High-Speed Rail Project because it came up short in a compliance review.
Gateway would fail a compliance review as it doesn’t add any capacity. During a Friday virtual court hearing, two lawyers for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Charles Enloe and Faris Mohammed, were present. They should tell their bosses, Secretary Sean Duffy and Deputy Secretary Steve Bradbury, how the president can get his way on Gateway and make everyone better off.
