6 events in Passaic County with a date

Rail tunnel project could halt soon, causing layoffs

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

..... Construction on the $16 billion program to build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River will pause on February 6 [2026] if President Donald Trump does not lift the pause on the projects amid a political feud with Democrats.
..... Alarm bells about having to halt construction rang loudly at the Gateway Development Commission's board meeting on Tuesday, January 27, [2026] with Senator chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey weighing in.
..... "There is only one person who terminated gateway, and there is only one person who can get it back on track, and that is President Trump," Schumer said to a full room of Gateway board commissioners. staff members, advocates for the project and dozens of laborers who would lose their jobs.
..... "To play political games in light of the immense consequences of not continuing this vital project is a gross violation of the president's obligation to the public - it is insane," Schumer said.
..... More than a dozen representatives for various trades working on the program took their message directly to Trump. they called on the president to make good on his promise to "make American great" by releasing the funding that will pay for the salaries of hardworking men and women trying to provide for their families.
..... Mike Hellstrom, vice president and eastern regional manager of the Laborers' International Union of North America, said this projections "they very definition of America first. It's time to stop using this project as a political pawn and a political fight. It doesn't serve any of us."
..... In addition to the impact on construction workers and thousands of supporting jobs, a pause would make victims of the hundreds of thousands of daily commuters on NJ Transit and Amtrak who rely on passenger rail through the decrepit and unreliable existing tunnels, which is over 100 years old - and which is due to be rehabilitated as part of the tunnel project.
..... "Train delays are not merely an inconvenience, they have real and lasting consequences," said Balpreet Grewal-Virk, the Gateway commission's co-chair. "We have waited years for the Hudson tunnel project to address these challenges, and here we are after so much progress - we cannot allow construction to stop."

Construction jobs at risk

..... Thomas Prendergast, CEO and president of the Gateway Development commission, the bistate agency that oversees the 15-year program, said that if constriction halts, nearly 1,000 workers will lose their jobs immediately and another 11,000 jobs that support the work will disappear.
..... "We're moving aggressively forward. If you suspend a job and have to close it down and secure it, to start it up, you not only lose time, but you're spending money on things you didn't expect to spend money on," Prendergast said.
..... For the next 10 days, contractors will be winding down work at the five active constructions sites, including laying off workers.
..... The newly installed governor of New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, has not held back on her attacks of Trump - and has now added the Gateway program to that list.
..... "If the president does not restore funding to this project, which I helped secure while serving in Congress, he will single-handedly kill nearly 100,000 jobs and $20 billion in economic activity," Sherrill said in a statement.
..... "New Jersey will fight tooth and nail for our hard-earned tax dollars and this essential project that will make commuters e easier and improve quality of life for residents in the Garden State," she said.

How we got here

..... The Gateway project has been paying its contractors, which employ more than 1,000 workers, mostly using a $500 million line of credit since October, [2025] when the federal government shut down.
..... Normally, Gateway officials would have continued drawing down funds, but the Trump administration launched a "review" of Gateway's disadvantaged business enterprise policies - a federal initiative to involve small and minority-owned businesses in federally funded projects - on the same day the shutdown began.
..... Weeks later, Trump declared the tunnel project "terminated."
..... Four months later - and more than two months after the government reopened - the federal funding spigot for Gateway remains shut off, even though agency and federal officials neared a resolution after the review of the minority business program.
..... "Despite responding to all the request" from the U.S. Department of Transportation "in a timely, transparent and responsible way, none of this means anything when faced with the harsh reality that President Trump himself made the decision to cut off funding," said Gateway co-chair Alicia Glen.
..... Asked whether the agency is considering legal action against the Trump administration to get the funds released Prendergast said it is not talking about that right now and instead is focused on ensuring hat any outstanding questions about the disadvantaged business program are addressed.

The background

..... There is perhaps no project with less political luck than the efforts to build an additional two-track rail tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New York Penn Station and Secaucus.
..... The idea dates back to the Pennsylvania Railroad in the early 20th century - when the current two-track tube was constructed - and was revived in the 2000s with a project known as ARC, but that was canceled by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in 2010.
..... A new vision fro the tunnel, known as Gateway, emerged with a formal announcement in 2015, but it was held up by the first Trump administration.
..... During the Biden administration, the program accelerated, and the parties reached an agreement with the feds to secure $12 billion in federal funding, which would pay for more than 75% of estimated project costs.
..... Since then, construction has begun on five project sites, and tunnel boring machine parts have begun arriving in North Bergen, where they will be assembled with the expectation of starting to drill through rock face this spring. [2026]
..... Amid the decades of fits, starts and delays, the existing tunnel is now 116 years old and regularly requires shutdowns to make repairs form age or because of the salt water that intruded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
..... As a result, commuters on the busiest stretch of passenger rail in North America routinely deal with delays, cancellations and unpredictable communes as they travel to and from the wealth capital of the country.

Board member's contract link

..... News of the dwindling cash flow comes as concerns are being raised about a Gateway board member, New York commissioner Jamey Barbas.
..... Barbas voted to approve a contract for Gateway's project delivery partner, a joint venture of Parsons Corporation, Arcadis of New York Incorporated, and Mace North America Ltd., known as MPA Delivery Partners - even though she previously worked for Parsons for 12 years and still has a substantial finical interest in the company, according to an exclusive report by NorthJersey.com .
..... Months after approving that contract, Barbas was rehired by Parsons as a senior project manager focused on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway project.
..... Barbas began recusing herself from Gateway matters involving Parsons at the agency and company in April 2024, two months after the contract was approved and around the time she started interviewing at Parsons.
..... Government watchdog and ethics express have questioned why she voted on the matter in the first place, given the conflicts with Parsons, and whether she should continue serving on the board now that she is recused from matters involving the most significant contract before the Gateway commission.

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