After RPA’s June 2022 board meeting, Craig Schulz –Amtrak Director of External Affairs and Outreach for the Gateway Program – took interested board members and RPA staff on a tour of the North River Tunnel and the other Gateway Program related assets that are slated for repair or replacement in Amtrak’s “American View” inspection car. There is no better way to grasp the decrepit state of the 111-year-old tunnels than to see them firsthand.
Mr. Schulz narrated the thirty minute journey–from New York City Penn Station to Newark Penn Station–pointing out the specific ways that the Gateway Program would improve rail service, from connecting the new tunnel to NYC Penn Station from the South to modernizing the physical infrastructure that was greatly damaged by Superstorm Sandy. As of now, Amtrak and NJ Transit are able to run a maximum of 24 trains per hour through the North River Tunnel. If there were to be a partial tunnel shutdown, that number would be reduced to 6 per hour, putting a disastrous onus on the region.
Water damage from Superstorm Sandy has persisted even after the water drained; chemicals from the millions of gallons of salt water continue to erode the six-foot bench walls that serve as an emergency egress and also protect critical 12,000 volt power cables that power the Northeast Corridor. They’re in constant need of repair, posing a dangerous scenario if an evacuation from the train in the tunnels ever did occur. Building a new two-track tunnel as part of the Hudson Tunnel Project will allow Northeast Corridor rail service to continue while the century-old North River Tunnel is closed for comprehensive repairs.
Currently, some work is done overnight to remove falling cement so that it doesn’t land on the tracks, mitigate leak damage, and chip away at falling icicles in the winter. “We’re really doing whatever we can to keep the tunnel operational,” Schulz said. “It’s an imperative.” Water damage is the root cause of most problematic rail service delays. For example, saltwater often passes false signals through the tunnel’s old ballasted track erroneously indicating that a train is present when one is not, which prevents other train traffic from moving into that space. Issues like that are nearly impossible to mitigate without replacing the trackbed in the tunnel.
After exiting the tunnel on the New Jersey side, we passed Secaucus Junction, where the new Bergen Loop–another component of the Gateway Program–would connect to the Northeast Corridor. The Bergen Loop would allow for a one-seat ride to New York Penn Station for riders on the Pascack Valley, Main, and Bergen County lines via a loop track, a transformative project that would improve transit conditions and connections for communities in that part of New Jersey and New York West of the Hudson River. The Loop will be accompanied by additional capacity enhancements to Secaucus Junction and an additional NJ Transit Rail Yard in the area.
The Gateway project furthest along is the new Portal North Bridge, where construction is slated to start in the coming weeks. The new Portal North Bridge will be a high fixed-span bridge over 50 feet above the river replacing the 111-year-old existing Portal Bridge, which is only 20 feet above the river, so it will no longer have to swing open and close for river traffic. That movement often creates train delays, which can be especially disruptive if the bridge fails to close properly and must be whacked back into place with a sledgehammer. A future Portal South Bridge project will also be built over the Hackensack at a later date to complete a four-track alignment through this section of the NEC.
We passed over the Sawtooth Bridges–where the Northeast Corridor connects with or crosses over additional NJ Transit, PATH, and Conrail tracks–the redevelopment of which will expand the two-track structure to four tracks and will fix up the century-old bridges which are in poor condition. Preliminary engineering on this project is just beginning, which follows their completed environmental review.
After passing the Harrison PATH station–where the Harrison Fourth Track project is located–and the Dock Bridge–which is also slated for a series of improvements–the journey ended at Newark Penn Station, which marks the end of “Gateway territory,” which encompasses the ten miles between Newark and New York.
