Preparing for 'Transportation Armageddon' on the Hudson

Last October, officials revealed a potential doomsday scenario for the Northeast Corridor: the century-old Hudson River train tubes connecting Manhattan with the mainland would need to be taken out of commission for lengthy maintenance at some undetermined point in time. Hundreds of thousands of riders a day would be impacted, from Amtrak travelers to New Jersey Transit commuters, as would local and regional economies. The only thing more frightful than that prospect were the images of tunnel damage suffered during Superstorm Sandy.

A year out from those warnings, Amtrak spokesperson Craig Schultz says there’s no timeline for the closure. Officials hope they can build a new tunnel, known as the Gateway project, before shutting down the old one. But even as momentum for Gateway increases—Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey finally pledged half the funding in September, and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced preliminary work last week—Schultz says the new tunnel’s completion is probably 10 years out “realistically speaking.”