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The additional funds will provide the GDC with a cushion with which to facilitate advance payments, as well as the construction of the newest phases of the Hudson Tunnel Project: the Palisades Tunnel and the Hudson River Ground Stabilization project.
Addressing the GDC’s board members, CEO Kris Kolluri spoke to the importance of the extra funding.
“When you add it all up together, not only is a significant portion of the money for all the contracts you have awarded and you’re about to award in hand, but we are fully prepared with authorized and appropriated money,” Kolluri said. “This makes sure there is no gap in our funding as we award some of these very big contracts.”
Approved by GDC’s board on Thursday, the Palisades Tunnel contract marks the beginning of the tunnel boring activity on the Hudson Tunnel Project. According to Kolluri, it is the HTP’s largest and most complex contract to date.
The Palisades Tunnel project consists of twin 5,100 feet long tunnels with an inside diameter of 25 feet 2 inches and six cross passages. The GDC plans to excavate the tunnels with tunnel boring machines, with construction beginning at the Tonnelle Avenue construction site and progressing eastward into the Hudson County shaft.
Kolluri highlighted the importance of the project. “We are, with the consideration of today’s votes, at the point of no return, factually, objectively, and in every measure that we have promised,” he said.
Additionally approved by the board Thursday was the second phase of the Hudson River Ground Stabilization project. GDC’s first heavy construction contract award, the HRGS project’s first phase began in 2024 and joined ongoing construction at HYCC-3 in Manhattan and Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen.
“This is certainly a very significant project,” Jim Morrison, GDC’s chief technology officer, said. “This is one that is required as advanced work to allow for mining of the Hudson River tunnel. Its purpose is to strengthen 1200 feet of the riverbed to facilitate that future contract for the Hudson River… which has already begun.”
In the last month, the GDC has rapidly taken steps to fulfill its mission. The very same afternoon that the agency signed its full funding grant agreement, it received the first infusion of $800 million from the Federal Transit Authority. Only 23 days since receiving its full funding commitment, the board approved the first tunnel project.
In January, GDC and Amtrak executed a funding agreement for $1.016 billion. In addition to the full funding grant agreement from the FTA, the GDC received three RIF loans of $4 billion, representing the largest RIF loans ever granted by the Build America Bureau. Later in the year, the agency closed on a liquidity facility of $500 million.
“The GDC is an evolving organization,” Kolluri said. “We have transformed GDC from a start up to a strong and capable agency with the financial, compliance, and technical capacity to deliver the most urgent infrastructure project in America.”
The expected construction duration of the Palisades Tunnel project falls between summer of 2024 and spring of 2027. Phase two of the HRGS project is expected to occur between fall of 2024 and spring of 2027. Each completed phase brings the GDC closer to delivering critical rail infrastructure between Newark, New Jersey and Penn Station.
The commission’s recent moves have been widely applauded by advocacy groups across the region. William Healy, a representative for the New Jersey Alliance for Action, applauded the board’s recent actions.
“Every day that we delay, we are subject to a possible transportation Armageddon because of the vulnerability of the 114 year old tunnel that brings our trains into New York City at the present time,” Healy said. “I want to congratulate the Commission for working so effectively with President Biden and our congressional delegation of the both states and securing unprecedented funding for a project that is the most important in the nation, bar none.”