Project progress
First step of NJ entrance to new rail tunnel nearly finished
By: Colleen Wilson
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... One of the first construction projects associated with the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel project beneath the Hudson River - the Tonnelle Avenue overpass and relocation of the utilities in North Bergen - is expected to be completed in October, [2025] Gateway Development Commission CEO Thomas Prendergast said April 14. [2025]
..... In 2023, the start of the overpass; construction marked the groundbreaking for the nine-part Gateway project.
..... The construction portion of the Tonnelle Avenue phase was estimated to cost $28.6 million, and Naik Consulting Group was paid another $12.5 million to proved construction management. Conti Civil LLC is the construction contractor.
..... Prendergast said the project remains on budget.
..... Once completed, the Tonnelle Avenue site will have one of the shafts to launch two tunnel boring machines that will drill through rock in the Palisades.
..... A separate shaft is being built at the Weehawken-Hoboken border, where a new drill head will be installed to excavate through rive silt.
..... "The tunnel boring machine is a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment, custom-made,: Prendergast said. "It comes totally unassembled with big parts, but you assemble it and put it down in the shaft and then you start boring."
..... The new two-track 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 is more than a century old and was badly damage by Superstorm Sandy. Frequent malfunctions in the old tunnel case delays for riders.
.....
Prendergast also presented target completion dates for several other phases of the Gateway project.
..... The $649 million concrete casing project on the New York side of the Hudson River near Hudson Yards, is the next project expected to be completed, with a target toward the end of 2026.
..... This project is in part, carving the path of the tunnel as it will enter New York Penn Station and will be 50% completed this spring, [2025] Prendergast said.
..... Since January, [2025] the team has been "been focused on excavating the 80-foot-deep hole under the High Line where the new concrete casing section will be built," he added.
..... The Hudson River ground stabilization project, which is estimated to cost $284 million and involves building a cofferdam and mixing concrete into the soil so it can handle tunnel boring, is projected to be completed by March 2027.
..... "The team has mixed more than 200 columns of concrete and salt to reinforce the riverbed so when the tunnel boring machine goes through, the soil will be in acceptable conditions to have that happen," Prendrgast said.
.....
The $456.6 million Palisades tunnel project, which will include the beginning of tunnel boring activity, is expected to be completed by the end of 2027.
..... The $1.8 billion Manhattan tunnel project involves clearing a 700-foot path for the future tunnel as it approaches the Manhattan side of the Hudson River and is expected to be completed by October 2029.