A major milestone in one of the region’s most anticipated transportation projects is officially underway. The Gateway Development Commission (GDC) announced the start of tunnel boring for the Hudson Tunnel Project on September 28th. The project will create a new rail connection between New Jersey and New York City. The first tunnel boring machine started digging on October 8th. The work marks the first phase of building a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River in more than 100 years. Here’s what commuters need to know.
About the Hudson Tunnel Project
According to a press release from the GDC, the Hudson Tunnel Project is part of the broader Gateway Program, a series of infrastructure improvements designed to modernize rail travel between New Jersey and New York. The project will build a new two-tube rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and rehabilitate the existing North River Tunnel, which has been in continuous use since 1910. The century-old tunnel is a major source of train delays for the hundreds of thousands of passengers who travel along the busy Northeast Corridor every day. The new tunnel is designed to improve rail service reliability and resilience while adding capacity to meet the region’s growing transportation needs.
The first phase of tunnel boring will focus on a section of the route beneath the Palisades in New Jersey. Two tunnel boring machines will excavate approximately 5,100 feet through hard rock, traveling from the tunnel portal in North Bergen to the Hudson County Access Shaft on the border of Weehawken and Hoboken. According to the GDC, the machines are expected to advance approximately 30 feet per day. They’re projected to reach the access shaft about one year after launching. Once the machines arrive, crews will remove them through the access shaft and replace them with a second pair designed to handle the conditions beneath the Hudson River. The second set will bore the remaining sections of the two parallel tunnel tubes between New Jersey and Manhattan…