LaHood: killing tunnel is a 'devastating blow to thousands of workers, millions of commuters and the state's economic future'
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, left, was 'extremely disappointed' with Gov. Christie's decision to kill the Hudson River rail tunnel project. TRENTON — All through the last-ditch efforts to persuade Gov. Chris Christie not to kill the nation’s largest public works project, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood held his tongue, said little publicly, met with the governor twice and continued to hold out hope the multi-billion dollar Hudson River train tunnel project could be saved.
But when Christie announced for the second time Wednesday he was scrapping the Access to the Region’s Core project, the gray-haired bureaucrat unloaded.
"I am extremely disappointed in Gov. Christie’s decision to abandon the ARC tunnel project, which is a devastating blow to thousands of workers, millions of commuters and the state’s economic future," said LaHood, an Abraham Lincoln fan and former congressman known for his peacemaking skills.
"The governor’s decision to stop work on this project means commuters — who would have saved 45 minutes each day thanks to the ARC tunnel — will instead see no end to traffic congestion and ever-longer wait times on train platforms," LaHood said. Our (Department of Transportation) team has worked hard over the last several weeks to present Governor Christie with workable solutions to bring the ARC tunnel to life."
The federal government offered several options to sweeten the pot for New Jersey, federal officials said, among them a federal loan, the use of private financing and an offer to split the cost of $1.1 billion in overruns with the state and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
But Christie said it always came back to the same thing: New Jersey was assuming too much of the burden for overruns.
"In the end, what the proponents of this plan are asking me to do, on behalf of the citizens of this state, is to hand them over a blank check," Christie said during a news conference at the Statehouse in Trenton, "I simply will not do that to the people of the state of New Jersey. This is how we got ourselves into the third-highest debt load in America. This is how we got ourselves into the awful fiscal mess that we’re in."
The cancellation of the over-budget tunnel ends for now the two-decade-old quest to expand rail capacity between New Jersey and midtown Manhattan.
It was the second time this month the governor killed the project. He scrapped it on Oct. 7, saying his advisers were projecting overruns of $2.3 billion to $5.3 billion beyond the original $8.7 billion price tag.
The next day, at the urging of LaHood, Christie agreed to give the project a grace period while federal officials searched for cost alternatives to help New Jersey pay for the tunnel that was most recently projected to cost between $9.78 billion and $12.71 billion.
The federal government and Port Authority had each allocated $3 billion for the project and New Jersey committed $2.7 billion — including $1.25 billion in New Jersey Turnpike Authority money.
Christie has said he didn’t want the New Jersey version of Boston’s "Big Dig" — a tunnel mega-project that saw the final tally climb to nearly 10 times the initial $2.8 billion estimate.
The tunnel was to double train capacity to and from New York City, increasing the Garden State’s access to wealthy jobs in Manhattan. It was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018.
But the only visible sign of the proposed 9-mile tunnel is a support span in the area where the tunnel was to begin in North Bergen.
Still, up to $600 million has already been spent, mostly on design and planning work.
With each week since Christie called a construction moratorium on Sept. 10, tunnel proponents have become more pessimistic the project would happen.
Critics have maintained Christie all along wanted to cancel the project and use part of New Jersey’s share to replenish the state’s nearly bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund, which pays for road and bridge repairs and transit services. Christie has vehemently opposed increasing the state’s gas tax to pay for the fund, saying the state’s residents are already overtaxed.
"Forty five days to take down a project that was 20 years in the planning process is absolutely irresponsible," Zoe Baldwin, the New Jersey advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said outside Christie’s news conference.
Christie said he has kept an open mind for the last couple of weeks, but was never presented an alternative that adequately protected state taxpayers.
"Absolutely, my mind could have been changed on this," he said. "I’ve said all along, this is a dollars and cents issue. It is not a philosophical issue."
Tunnel opponents maintained the project was rushed together so then-Gov. Jon Corzine could get a re-election campaign photo opportunity at a ceremonial groundbreaking in summer 2009. They also said the tunnel, which was to end at West 34th Street in Manhattan, lacked connectivity to New York Penn Station and Manhattan’s prosperous East Side.
The project got the derisive moniker, "The Tunnel to Macy’s Basement."
"I support Gov. Christie’s decision that refuses to allow the liability for overruns to be shouldered by New Jersey’s taxpayers and commuters," Assemblyman Alex DeCroce (R-Morris) said. "The governor recognizes that we can no longer continue to burden the people who pay the highest taxes in the country."
Christie said it made sense for New Jersey to partner with Amtrak on a new tunnel to New York Penn Station.
But Baldwin said that project is a generation away.
Proponents said the ARC tunnel project would have created 6,000 construction-related jobs a year and close to 45,000 permanent jobs once completed. They also said it would have provided transfer-free rides to Manhattan, gotten 22,000 cars off the roads every day and eliminated nearly 70,000 tons of greenhouse gasses gases each year.
Without the new two-track tunnel, which would have been able to handle an extra 25 trains per hour during peak periods, New Jersey is left with a century-old two-track tunnel that can handle 23 trains.