Trump Says Gateway tunnel Is Terminated. How Did We Get Here?

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s attempt last month to cancel funding for an immense railroad and tunnel construction project in New Jersey was not surprising to anyone who paid attention.

The president’s move to end the Gateway Program, something it’s not clear he has the power to do, was the latest salvo in a years-long simmering showdown between the president and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York.

When Trump said last month he was “terminating” funding for Gateway, he appeared to relish the moment, twisting a verbal knife into a longtime adversary.

“It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get,” Trump said in front of cameras in the Oval Office. “Tell him it’s terminated.”

Schumer said Trump’s move was “petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters,” and that Trump was acting out of “pure spite and stupidity.”

While Democratic lawmakers condemned Trump’s move, the debate over Gateway rocketed into central place in the New Jersey gubernatorial race and New Jersey Attorney Matt Platkin threatened to sue, it wasn’t the first time a long-planned, trans-Hudson River rail-and-tunnel project already under construction has been threatened with closure.

ARC — Where it all began

More than 15 years ago, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie halted a predecessor project to Gateway — a multibillion tunnel project called ARC, shorthand for Access to the Region’s Core, despite more than a decade of planning.

The financial plan for what was to be a nearly $9 billion, state-led project had been anchored on significant contributions from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, plus money from the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Like Gateway, the ARC project also called for the establishment of a new rail connection with New York City’s Penn Station via two new tubes that would allow for rail traffic to pass under the river in each direction at the same time.

But Christie, a Republican who took office in 2010, cited concerns of possible cost overruns when he canceled the project in his first year as governor. Since the state government suffered severe revenue losses due to the 2007-2009 Great Recession, New Jersey would not be able to absorb increased costs of the tunnel project, he argued.

“We can’t spend money we don’t have,” Christie said at the time in defense of the decision.

However, Christie’s decision also allowed for resources earmarked for ARC to be redirected to the state’s gas-tax supported Transportation Trust Fund. The move allowed Christie to avoid raising gasoline taxes during his first term.

Blowback came swiftly. Then-U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat who died in 2013, predicted ending the ARC would “go down as one of the biggest public policy blunders in New Jersey history.”

“It could take New Jersey another 30 or 40 years, and a much higher price tag, to recover from the loss of the ARC tunnel,” Lautenberg said at the time.

2011 — Gateway is born

Months after Christie ended ARC, in early 2011, Lautenberg and then-Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez appeared with a key Amtrak official to pitch another tunnel project that would require significant federal involvement and money: Gateway.

By mid-2015, a top Obama administration transportation official declared Gateway “the most important rail project in the United States.”

“It was like, ‘Whoa! We finally are hearing it from Washington,’” Martin Robins, a longtime New Jersey transportation expert, said at the time. “I wish it had come earlier.”

Electrical problems that summer in the two existing tunnels beneath the river snarled rail traffic for several days, enraging commuters. Christie and then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, announced a deal for both states to split any costs on the project that the federal government wouldn’t.

It was a breakthrough in the long-running effort to expand rail capacity from the dilapidated pair of tunnels in existence now — Superstorm Sandy damaged both in 2012, which the Pennsylvania Railroad built in 1910 — to four, easing freight and passenger movement.

Though funding questions remained about how to cover the cost at the time, then said to be $13 billion. But for a moment, there was a clear path for Gateway, and the technocratic Hillary Clinton, who had represented New York in the U.S. Senate and understood rail’s importance to the greater Northeast, was aiming to become the nation’s 45th president.

2018 — Then came Trump

In his first term, Trump balked at signing funding legislation that contained Gateway money, flirting with a government shutdown in 2018.

“If the news reports are accurate that he wants to kill it or hold it because he’s mad at Chuck Schumer, that makes no sense,” former Congressman Peter King (R-NY), who represented a Long Island seat for years, said at the time. “This is essential to the national economy as well as the regional economy.”

Democrats piled on. At the time, Menendez, now serving time in federal prison over a public-corruption conviction, called the Trump administration’s decision a “hit job on New Jersey families and commuters.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration delayed publication of a “record of decision” for a key environmental review Gateway needed to proceed.

Then when the Trump administration proposed a national infrastructure-renewal initiative in 2018, it deprioritized Gateway, angering officials in New Jersey and members of his own party.

2021 – Biden revives Gateway

Not until the Biden administration was Gateway seriously revived, in part through the adoption in 2021 of an infrastructure law, which allocated $66 billion for passenger rail across the country, including $11 billion for Gateway.

That law drew bipartisan support. Every member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation voted for it, including Republican Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) and Chris Smith (R-4th) who were just two of the 13 House Republicans who voted “yes.”

2023 – Groundbreaking

Officials from the Biden administration were on hand in November 2023 for a groundbreaking that was held in North Bergen on the New Jersey side of the river.

“This is a moment that has been more than a decade in the making,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said at the groundbreaking. “And while I won’t belabor the point, let me quickly note that this is a drastic shift as compared with previous administrations, both in Jersey and in Washington,” Murphy said. “We used to hear one broken promise after another.”

Less than a year later, a renewed funding agreement between the federal government, New York and New Jersey, as well as the port authority, was announced.

The funding pact, approved by the Gateway Development Commission, a bi-state agency made to oversee the project, specified the federal government would pay for 70% of the estimated $16 billion cost.

Under this plan, New Jersey has committed roughly $700 million toward the project’s overall cost, a contribution the state is financing through a federal loan being repaid with revenue the New Jersey Turnpike Authority is generating through tolls, according to turnpike authority budget documents.

Overall, the Gateway Program could spur hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic output in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, according to a study from the Regional Plan Association, a nonpartisan research group, released this year.

Gateway’s centerpiece is the pair of new tunnels linking the rail stations in Newark and Manhattan — the busiest stretch of track, 10 miles in total, in the nation.

But the overall program contains 11 “core” projects, including the critical step to replace the century-old Portal North Bridge, which currently has to open and close for river traffic, a significant bottleneck.

Other bridges, loops and concrete casings, plus an expansion of Penn Station, are included, too.

More than 750,000 passengers on average every day ride the Northeastern Corridor, the rail path between Boston and Washington, D.C., and the Newark-to-New York segment is a key linchpin.

2025 – Trump’s blow to Gateway

Trump delivered his latest bombastic outburst against Gateway in the midst of a federal shutdown, which began Oct. 1 and threatens federal paychecks and funding for food programs.

The Trump administration has tried to use the federal budget to punish Democrats and corral them into voting for Republican legislation to reopen the government.

For example: On the first day of the shutdown, the White House budget director, Russell Vought, said the administration was withholding about $18 billion from Gateway and a New York City subway line over diversity complaints.

Days later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Gateway was not at risk.

“We’re not trying to shut down these projects,” Duffy told reporters Oct. 6 at Newark Liberty International Airport, referencing large infrastructure projects including Gateway.

Days after that came Trump from the Oval Office, where he declared it “terminated.”

The future of Gateway

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic congresswoman running to be New Jersey’s next governor, said that day she would “fight this tooth-and-nail and sue the Trump administration,” while her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli said he would “advocate” for Gateway. “This is a critical infrastructure project and I will fight to get it done,” he said.

Despite Trump’s words, Duffy breathed new life into Gateway last week, when he said the project was not over but rather under review, a process that would go faster once the government reopens.

“The problem is our staff has been furloughed. I have one person doing the reviews,” Duffy said.

From both sides of the Hudson, quietly, work continues — a fact the death two weeks ago of Jorge Sanchez, 52, a construction worker authorities said had been working on poured concrete structures, punctuated.

“He was more than a carpenter,” Paul Capurso, executive secretary-treasurer of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said in a statement.