Gov. Murphy To Lobby Congressional Lawmakers For Gateway Funding
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is making another push for the Gateway Project.
The governor will testify before a Congressional delegation this morning at Port Authority headquarters.
Questions remain about whether the rail tunnel project will be included in a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the country’s aging infrastructure.
Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure took a tour of the century-old North River Rail Tunnel under the Hudson River last night.
Part of the Gateway Project would replace the deteriorating tunnel linking Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between New York and New Jersey.
The project has been at the center of a funding dispute for years.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders agreed on a long-range plan to spend $2 trillion to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. There’s no word on whether that plan would include the rail tunnel.
“We recognize that the whole Gateway – and that Gateway is the tunnels and the bridges and all the approaches – is critical nationally, not just to New York and New Jersey, not just to the Northeast region, but the entire United States,” Chairman of the committee Rep. Peter DeFazio said ahead of Thursday’s tour.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has previously referred to the Gateway Project as “the single most urgent infrastructure project in the nation.”
“We are locked in together on getting the Gateway tunnel build. We need to get the president to own up to his end. That’s the ideal world that I also want to get to, but we can’t get there tomorrow, unfortunately,” Murphy said on a radio show Wednesday.
Amtrak and New Jersey Transit leaders are also expected to testify during Friday’s meeting.
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May 03, 2019 at 05:59PM
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