A team of US companies Traylor Bros. and Walsh Construction alongside Sweden’s Skanska has won a $1.29bn contract to build a segment of New York’s Hudson Tunnel Project.
It’s the first new contract award on the roughly $16bn rail megaproject since it was paused amid a Trump administration funding freeze announced in October last year.
Package 1C involves boring two new, parallel, 7,250ft-long single-track tunnels from the Hudson County Access Shaft in Weehawken, New Jersey to 12th Avenue on Manhattan’s West Side.
The scope of work includes tunnel liner and floor installation, construction of nine cross passages connecting the two tunnel tubes, ground stabilisation work near the Hudson Bergen Light Rail and permanent underpinning of New Jersey’s Willow Avenue Bridge.
Custom-built mixed-use tunnel boring machines have been designed for the mixed ground conditions beneath the Hudson River, including weathered rock, soft soil and stabilised ground.
In addition to tunnel boring, work includes installing precast concrete segmental linings and permanent precast inverts and complex ground treatment activities in challenging subsurface conditions.
The Hudson Tunnel Project also includes replacing the two tubes of the existing North River Tunnel, which has been in service since 1910 and was damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
The new Hudson River twin-tube tunnel is due to open in 2035. The rehabilitated North River Tunnel is expected to open following a three-year programme of works in 2038.
When complete, the project will replace the existing two rail tubes under the Hudson – which require constant maintenance – with four brand new tubes, clearing a bottleneck on the Northeast Rail Corridor along the eastern US coast, the busiest rail corridor in the country.
Chris Hebert, Traylor Bros. vice president, said: “This is a nationally significant infrastructure project that will improve mobility, strengthen reliability, and support the long-term future of passenger rail service between New Jersey and New York.”
Funding freeze
The project is funded mostly by federal grants. It was thrown into confusion last October when the Trump administration halted disbursements on the grounds that programmes to include Black-, minority-, and women-owned businesses in federally-funded projects may be “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional”.
The project continued using available funds until February this year, when that money ran out. At the time, around $1bn had been spent on construction.
The body in charge of the project, the Gateway Development Commission, sued the Trump administration for breach of contract on 2 February. The Commission sought $205m in disbursements owed under contract and damages in the event of a project shutdown.
New York Attorney General Letitia James also sued and won a temporary restraining order prohibiting the administration from shutting the project down.
That didn’t unfreeze the funding immediately, however, and the Commission suspended work on 6 February.
On 24 February, the Commission restarted the project after the administration released the $205m.
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