Hello, I’m Brian Fritsch, Regional Plan Association’s Communications Director and the Campaign Manager for the Build Gateway Now Coalition. Build Gateway Now is a coalition of over 45 civic, labor, business, and elected groups united by a single tenet — the Gateway Program is the nation’s most urgent infrastructure project.

RPA and the Build Gateway Now Coalition encourage the Gateway Development Commission to advance the appointment of Kris Kolluri as its new CEO. Kris has an impressive and extensive background in delivering on major infrastructure projects and we believe he is an excellent choice for this role. His hiring will also mark a crucial step in moving forward on the full funding agreement for the Hudson Tunnel project. With Kris taking the lead at the GDC and an updated rating for the project from the federal government having been secured nearly four months ago, we must take advantage of this moment.

At RPA’s Centennial Assembly on May 6, we brought together over 600 guests to celebrate 100 years of RPA and discuss the region’s future. Even in that context, the Gateway Program stood out, as Governors Hochul and Murphy announced the nomination of Kris as the next GDC CEO and committed to moving the project forward through a renewed partnership between the states. Majority Leader Schumer reiterated the great need for the project multiple times, urging us all, ​“to set aside our differences and get this done, so let’s not bicker over a million little things, a million different alignments and a million little questions,” while laying out his three-point plan for moving the project forward as quickly as possible through renewed cooperation between all the many project partners.

To advance the Majority Leader’s clear goal, RPA has been researching what the post-covid economy will look like in the region, including looking at the new patterns of work from home coupled with the level of job and population growth in order to assess the pandemic’s impacts on trans-Hudson travel broadly and specifically try to answer the question of whether the Gateway Program is still needed. By now, we are all familiar with the catastrophic economic and environmental impacts that a partial shutdown of the North River Tunnel we enumerated in our reportA Preventable Crisis, and the enormous benefits building a new tunnel will create. We hope and expect that our forthcoming report will have a similar impact with those speculating about the post-covid future of the region and what it means to this program. RPA looks forward to discussing this effort in more detail very soon.

Thank you to the Gateway Development Commission for your continued leadership and for opening the floor for public comments today. It’s great to be back in person, and we look forward to working with you all and Kris to make the full funding agreement for the Hudson Tunnel happen.