Funds For Gateway Tunnel Resume –– UPDATED 2/18/26
Written by David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief
Image courtesy Gateway Development Commission
New York –– After having been suspended for over four months, funding for the Gateway rail tunnel has resumed.
Remainder of Funds Released
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced yesterday that the federal government released the remaining $98 million in overdue funding to the Gateway Development Commission and provided an additional $30 million in reimbursements for work completed in January.
Governor Hochul said “This afternoon, the Gateway Development Commission will notify contractors to prepare to resume work next week. Many of the 1,000 union workers I stood with yesterday, whose livelihoods were put at risk by the President’s actions, will soon be back on the job.”
This past Friday, February 13, the New York Times reported that funding for the Gateway railroad tunnel between New Jersey and New Yorik City was restored by a federal judge. The funding was halted in September 2025 because the POTUS 47 Administration said it wanted to review the contracts associated with the project to ensure that they followed recently revised federal requirements. The contract for the Gateway Tunnel calls for $16 billion, and a payment for $205 million toward the Gateway work was due at the time of the September funding halt. The withheld funding also resulted in the layoff of 1,000 union workers.
The Gateway Tunnel project is considered by many to be the most important current U.S. infrastructure project. Nevertheless, funding was withheld for four months.
What Is The Gateway Tunnel Project?
While most RT&S readers are familar with the Gateway Tunnel project, here’s a brief review of what it’s all about. According to the Gateway Tunnel website, the project has two primary goals:
- Building nine miles of new passenger rail track between New York and New Jersey, including nearly five miles of tunnel boring to construct a new, two-tube tunnel under the Hudson River.
- Rehabilitating the North River Tunnel, which has been in service since 1910 and is a source of chronic delays for hundreds of thousands of daily passengers.
“When the Hudson Tunnel Project is finished, there will be four modern tracks between New Jersey and New York where there are currently only two. This will increase operational flexibility and redundancy for Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT to support reliable, on-time service,” according to the website.
The website also contains the following video about the project:
While the POTUS 47 Administration initially reported that funding was being suspended so the contracts could be reviewed and compared to federal requirements, a more recent report said that POTUS 47 told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York that the funds could be released if he (Schumer) would support the renaming of two major transportation facilities –– Pennsylvania Station in New York and Dulles International Airport in Virginia (which serves the Washington, D.C. area) –– after POTUS 47. Schumer reportedly turned this idea down.
Apparently, some of the funding has been released, but not the full amount. New York Governor Kathy Hochul was quoted in the Times as saying: “Today we made progress. $30 million has finally been released, and a court-ordered report will force transparency on the remaining funds. But the job isn’t done. Full funding must be restored now.”
The Times also reported that the Gateway Development Commission said in a statement that “Construction remains paused for now and we are working with our contractors to plan how to deploy these funds in the most effective way and get workers back on the job to resume some construction as soon as possible,” the statement said.
