Gateway Tunnel Workers Rally in North Bergen as Federal Funding Remains Stuck in Limbo

As squabbling in Washington freezes work on the $16bn Gateway Tunnel, New York’s economy stands to learn the hard way how dependent it is on the timely flow of federal infrastructure funds.

On a muggy Monday morning in North Bergen, New Jersey, the hulking drums of a tunnel boring machine lie idle, their silence more eloquent than any speech. Laid-off workers, members of LIUNA Local 472, gathered not to swap hard hats for shovels, but to urge the White House to release the funds needed for them to return to their jobs beneath the Hudson River. The Gateway Tunnel project, a $16bn effort to secure the most important passenger rail link in the Northeast, is at a standstill—its fate, and the fate of at least 200,000 daily commuters, now tangled in federal court.

The immediate news is stark: after a federal judge granted New York and New Jersey a temporary restraining order to restore funding for the tunnel, the Department of Transportation responded with yet more legal wrangling, appealing for a stay and gaining three days’ breathing room to let an appellate court weigh in. On the ground, however, time is running out. Construction workers, backed by union leaders and local politicians, spoke of livelihoods suspended and the spectre of financial ruin. “Release these funds so we can go to work,” implored Lamont Richardson, a tunnel worker with mouths to feed.

This political gridlock could hardly have come at a worse moment for the metro area. Amtrak’s North River Tunnel, at 116 years, is in a perilous state—propped up more by hope than by engineering, particularly since Hurricane Sandy left it pockmarked with salt water damage. Regionally, these two tracks deliver a fifth of America’s GDP along the Northeast Corridor. The practical consequences of delay are already visible: commuters on Monday faced yet another round of maddening disruptions, reminders of how thin the margin of error has become.

Should the funding freeze drag on, the first-order effects for the city will be felt most keenly by workers and families. Some two thousand jobs tied to the project now hang in the balance; each week of inaction signals further uncertainty. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill let rip at the administration’s politicking—“the president of the United States cares more about politics than he does about working men and women in this country”—as elected officials jockeyed for leverage and soundbites.

It is, perhaps, only in New York that one can be reminded so bluntly of infrastructure’s centrality to urban prosperity. The Gateway project stands as a bulwark against the economic self-harm that would follow a tunnel failure: if the Hudson passage falters, New Yorkers, Jerseyites, and Bostonians would all pay the price in lost productivity, job losses, and snarled supply chains. Charles Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, was more apocalyptic: the absence of a redundant Hudson crossing, he warned, portends not just local headaches but a possible “recession, a depression in New York, New Jersey and all across America.”

This is no mere rhetorical flourish. By Amtrak’s estimate, even a partial failure of the tunnel would reduce train capacity by as much as 75%, with the knock-on effect reaching far beyond those ritualized commuter woes. Property values in the region could sink, real estate deals would wobble, and even the logistics industry—so dependent on reliable, cross-Hudson rail—would get battered. More abstractly, the city’s aura as America’s indispensable economic engine would lose its sheen, at least temporarily.

Beyond parochial politics, the frozen tunnel money reflects a broader malaise in America’s approach to public infrastructure. The Gateway saga is hardly unique: across the continent, high-cost, red-tape-laden megaprojects get snagged in partisan disputes and provincial interests. For all the fanfare around the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, implementation has proved uneven, and essential projects from California high-speed rail to Chicago’s upgrade plans have encountered similar potholes.

Comparisons with global peers sharpen the sense of frustration. In Europe and East Asia, critical cross-border or urban tunneling receives faster and more reliable support from central governments. The Channel Tunnel and Tokyo’s Shinkansen expansions were, by American standards, paragons of planning and execution. In contrast, America’s piecemeal, block-by-block battles—replete with lawsuits, arcane regulatory reviews, and presidential ego—bode ill for a nation that fancies itself world-class.

Federal foot-dragging, tunnel vision

Presidential ambition has rarely seemed so literal. Reports leaked by Senator Schumer suggest that President Trump tied support for Gateway to renaming Dulles Airport and Penn Station after himself—a baroque flourish that somehow manages to encapsulate both the drama and the pettiness of contemporary American governance. The White House, for its part, offered no comment as of press time; legislators and construction bosses alike are left checking Twitter, hoping for a sudden olive branch or, failing that, a cogent plan.

Against this circus, New Yorkers and neighboring New Jerseyans are right to look askance at Washington’s stewardship. Year after year, the city’s infrastructure report card grows more damning. Subway upgrades proceed at glacial pace, the Port Authority Bus Terminal is held together by willpower, and pennies trickle out for repairs. That the Gateway Tunnel—arguably the nation’s most critical rail bottleneck—should be held hostage to electoral calculation only underscores how much rests on the caprice of faraway mandarins.

To their credit, local leaders and unions have kept public attention squarely on the stakes. The threat is not abstract: even a short closure would mean as many as 450,000 daily trips disrupted, with economic losses estimated to run into billions. LIUNA’s turnout, and the stories of men like Richardson, remind us that behind every hardhat idled by a legal spat is a family losing pay, and a community set back by one more avoidable delay.

Yet there are glimmers—faint though they may be—of hope. The iron law of political pain suggests that, with enough pressure, Congress and the executive will have to relent. The prospect of mass disruptions, and the anger of workers who “voted for Trump” but may not do so again, offer incentives only the most insulated politician could ignore. Markets, too, tend to punish unreliability: repeated shutdown scares may yet galvanise the institutional investors and business interests who benefit from a buoyant, mobile metro area.

In the end, what the Gateway imbroglio reveals is not a shortage of money or technology, but of patience and political will. American cities, and New York foremost among them, need more than sporadic infusions of federal largesse to function. They require functional, forward-looking intergovernmental arrangements—a lesson that, for all the bluster in North Bergen, Washington appears slow to learn.

We reckon the city will muddle through, as it always does. But that is, at best, a modest boast for America’s only global city. ■