New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday afternoon said he would reconsider killing a multibillion tunnel project after meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
“The fact that the ARC project is not financially viable and is expected to dramatically exceed its current budget remains unchanged,” Christie said in a statement “However, this afternoon Secretary LaHood presented several options to potentially salvage a trans-Hudson tunnel project.”
The Republican governor said NJTransit executive director Jim Weinstein and his staff would work with the U.S. Department of Transportation to study those options for the project, known as the Access to the Region’s Core, over the next two weeks.
The statement did not elaborate what the options were, and queries were not immediately returned.
On Thursday Christie terminated the $8.7 billion passenger-rail tunnel project that would have doubled NJTransit rail capacity between New York City and northern New Jersey and created at least 6,000 construction jobs. New projections from the Federal Transit Administration and NJTransit estimated the final cost would be between $11 billion and $14 billion.
The 8.8 mile-long tunnel — already 16 months into construction — is one of the nation’s largest mass-transit projects. Christie said he won’t allow taxpayers to fund the project because there is no clear way for the state to cover cost overruns.
If the project does not move forward, New Jersey would have to repay $300 million of federal funds already spent on the project. The federal government and the Port Authority of the State of New York and New Jersey agreed to each contribute $3 billion to the project.
“I expect the governor to now work in good faith with the federal government to move this project forward,” U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said in a press release. “The secretary was clear with Gov. Christie: if this tunnel doesn’t get built, the $3 billion will go to other states. We can’t allow that to happen.”
The tunnel was to run from the township of North Bergen, under the Hudson River to midtown Manhattan. It would have eliminated a chokepoint under the river, where NJTransit shares a single, two-rail tunnel with Amtrak, It would have also permitted the passage of 48 trains at peak rush hour compared with the present 23.
The project was championed by New Jersey’s U.S. senators, Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, and former Gov. Jon Corzine — all Democrats. Christie, a Republican, defeated Corzine last year.
The Port Authority has already spent $206 million on the project, with the majority of that sum being spent on the Manhattan side.
