6 events in Passaic County with a date

Light at the End of the Tunnel

First phase of Gateway project wrapping up in North Bergen

By Colleen Wilson
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... Standing on the 18,000-yard, man-made mound of dirt off Tonnellle Avenue in North Bergen, the ground shakes as a yellow caterpillar drills an unforgiving root canal into the rock.
..... In 10 years here, there will be a freshly blazed track path through a cutout of the Palisades for the final descent into the new two-track rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River en route to New York Penn Station.
..... The shaking will continue then - not form construction machines, but from hundreds of daily trains that will rattle through the new addition to the Northeast Corridor.
..... The $41.1 million utilities and building an overpass to allow the trains to pass underneath Tonnelle, represents just a sliver of the overall $16 billion Gateway tunnel program.
..... But this two-year project, expected to wrap up in October, [2025] is critical for the future of the overall program - and was not as simple as it sounds.
..... Thomas Prendergast, CEO and president of the Gateway Development Commission, likened the project to an adage.
..... "How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time," Prendergast said. "This was most critical because you had to deal with the issue of getting the tunnel boring machines will cum in and be assemble and start. So this was the start of it."
..... Moving utilities is pretty standard for many construction project, but usually it's one or two things. At this site, the list included a gas line, electric, Verizon, Cable, sewer and water,said John Scheppenheiser III, senior vice president of Nalk consulting Group, the project's construction management firm.
..... "Every utility was here," Schweppenheiser said.
.... Now, they're in the final sages of finishing construction of a new, elevated Tonnelle Avenue - all while four lanes of traffic contained on the busy corridor lined with warehouses, garages and retail. "We could not shut this road down," Schweppenheiser said. "It is one of the most heavily traveled roads in the state, in the region actually - a lot of truck traffic - so working around an active road, keeping it moving, minimizing the delays, that was very key."
..... The Gateway Development Commission, the bistate agency overseeing the project, funded the Tonnelle Avenue portion in large part with a $25 million RAISE grant, which allowed that work to begin before the big, complicated full funding grant agreement was signed last sumer. [2024]
..... By then, the Tonnelle Avenue segment was nearly halfway through the constriction period.

Next comes the tunnel boring machine

..... This project, Prendergast said, is on a "critical path," which means if there are delays it can have severe consequences.
..... "You really want to start coming out of the box strong - and these guys did that," Prendergast said.
..... Once complete, this site will take on a new role: becoming the entry point for the tunnel boring machines.
..... That mound of dirt and ramp will become the staging ground for excavating dirt and rock, and drilling into the ground secant piles ti form a wall.
..... "It's a supportive exaction, so all that soil that's up there has to be retained," said Kurt Paxton, general superintendent for Secaucus-based construction company Schiavone, one of the three companies in the joint venture doing construction of the Palisades portion of the tunnel project.
..... The Palisades and Tonnelle Avenue portions are just two of nine projects within the $16 billion Gateway program.
..... The excavation work is in preparation of the tunnel boring machines that will begin drilling through the Palisades rock and ultimately from the entrance to the tunnel that will dip beneath the Hudson River.
..... Once complete, this area will nearly mirror its tunnel entrance twin several hundreds yards north, where the Pennsylvania Railroad built the original tunnel by lasting through the Palisades with little more than dynamite and sheer manpower in the early 20th century.
..... The new tunnel between North Jersey and Manhattan is meant to provide more reliable service along the Northeast Corridor for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders entering and leaving Manhattan's Penn Station. Once it is completed, work will begin to rehabilitate the existing tunnel, which was badly damaged by Superstorm Sandy.
..... "The opening up of the space outside of the portal would be about the same size" as the originator tunnel, Prendergast said, "But the construction means and methods are totally different today."

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