The first contract to build half of the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnels is expected to be awarded either this summer of fall, said officials of the commission overseeing its construction.
Work on a companion Gateway project to replace a 114-year old rail bridge over the Hackensack River is also on schedule and budget, despite some minor hiccups, said an independent report released Monday.
The twin Gateway tunnels from the New Jersey side, known as the Palisade Tunnel, will extend one mile into the Hudson River. Construction will see two tunnel boring machines gnaw their way through rock to the New York side, said Kris Kolluri, Gateway Development Commission CEO, during Monday’s board meeting.
“The procurement is out…five firms are short listed, we anticipate awarding the (construction) contracts sometime in the summer or fall 2024 after we have a full funding agreement,” Kolluri said.
What could be a history-making $6.8 billion federal grant could be awarded by the Federal Transit Administration in June, which would green light award major construction contracts.
As a prelude, the GDC board approved a Project Labor Agreement with 21 New Jersey trade unions that provides the same work rules and procedures for resolving grievances and other issues and avoiding job actions or lock outs that would slow or stop the project. The agreement even puts all the unions on the same holiday schedule.
“It’s important for taxpayers that the tunnels go smoothy,” Kolluri said.
A Regional Plan Association report released last week estimated Gateway could create 95,000 jobs, 20,000 more than initially forecast.
Meanwhile, work on an allied Gateway project, replacing the 114-year old Portal North bridge that carries Northeast Corridor tracks over the Hackensack River in Kearny is proceeding smoothly, said Amtrak’s Office of the Inspector General.
That independent report released Monday said the project, which is approximately 50% complete, was on budget and on schedule through January 2024. But the inspector general identified several risks to the project and Amtrak’s oversight of it. NJ Transit is the lead agency on the $2 billion project.
Among the risks were unanticipated demand for more track outages and company labor, the report said.
Current needs for track outages and labor far exceed what Amtrak anticipated, the inspector general said. In spring 2023, the construction contractor requested more than 300 single track outages and more than 100 double track outages to complete the work.
Those outages required more specialized workers to shut off electricity in overhead wires. While these increases have not affected the overall project budget, Amtrak has to use a portion of its own contingency funds to cover those increased costs. Amtrak also had to increase its railway protection staff to support 24-hour-a-day construction operations.
The inspector general warned the project faces cost and schedule risks if Amtrak cannot fully meet outage and labor demands as construction advances—risks it could have mitigated during planning.
Another issue was information and document sharing between Amtrak and NJ Transit, the report said.
Some problems sharing documents between the two agencies resulted after Amtrak’s construction role was reduced in 2020, the report said. Amtrak didn’t fully identify the specific information it needed from NJ Transit to oversee its interests during construction, the inspector general determined.
The report found that Amtrak’s team supporting NJ Transit was “overtasked and insufficiently staffed” to effectively manage Amtrak’s work on the project. Amtrak has hired additional project management and inspection staff to expand its team supporting NJ Transit and implemented a recommended comprehensive resource assessment.
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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X @CommutingLarry.
