So much of the discussion around the Gateway Tunnel project has been about ensuring New Jersey workers can get to Manhattan — and easing congestion on the Northeast Corridor, which runs between Washington, D.C., and Boston but dramatically slows here.
Tony Coscia, the chairman of Amtrak and someone who has worked on the project for more than two decades, said the impact of the tunnel is far greater than many in New Jersey realize. Its opening will help transform the rail industry in the state — even for those who never go through the tunnel.
Here’s why — and here’s how.
Adding two more railroad tracks will dramatically reduce the bottleneck in the area, allowing for far greater rail opportunities. It’s far more than simply doubling capacity, Coscia said.
“From the standpoint of someone in New Jersey, creating a modern, four-track system at the most critical juncture is really transformative,” he said. “Yes, it’s twice as many tracks, but it’s more than that, because the ability to run trains in opposite directions creates schedules with a lot of redundancies.”
Think of how a subway creates convenience, Coscia said.
“Rail travel works best when you give people a lot of frequencies,” he said. “If I tell you that you can go from your town to this town, but there’s only one train a day for you to do it, you probably don’t organize your life around that, because if there’s only one train and you miss it, you’ve got to wait another day.
“But, if the train left every couple of hours, you’d be more likely to utilize it.”
That’s not possible now, but it will be in a few years.
Coscia said having the extra capacity will completely change how non-commuters view train travel.
“Once you have that capacity, you can create a lot of integrated services that connect a lot of cities,” he said. “If you’re in New Jersey, this represents an enormous opportunity, because now you’re no longer thinking about the state borders as some sort of confinement.
“You’re basically saying, ‘Maybe we can connect different places within New Jersey,’ because now New Jersey Transit is no longer as constrained as they were.”
Of course, none of this can happen until the Gateway Tunnel project is complete. Coscia is hopeful it will be finished by 2035. There’s no reason to doubt that timeline so far, he said.
“It will undoubtedly have its difficult moments, and it will be really hard to stay on budget and on scope, but, so far, things have been going pretty well,” he said.
Coscia, a partner at Windels Marx in New Brunswick, was speaking to BINJE during the inaugural ride of the NextGen Acela — 28 new trains that will elevate Amtrak’s business-class efforts on the Northeast Corridor. He said the Gateway Tunnel project lines up with another big Amtrak initiative: Replacing all the trains it uses on regional runs.
“We already have a very substantial order with Siemens for the Airo trains that we use,” he said.
That turnover is just beginning. Coscia said most regional trains will be new by 2030 — and all will be new by 2035.
The effort to complete the tunnel project and transform the fleet comes at a time when Amtrak already is turning over its customer base.
Marketing efforts, particularly those on social media, are not only helping Amtrak regain its ridership, but they also are helping Amtrak expand its ridership to the next generation, Coscia said.
“The demographic of our ridership has changed dramatically,” he said. “First of all, it’s a much younger level of ridership than it had historically been. And it’s much broader.
“The truth is, business travel is not at the levels that existed pre-COVID. There are still people who don’t go to meetings because they could do it virtually. But, even with that, we have seen material spike in ridership. It’s been because people just like the idea of traveling by train.”
Coscia said the increase has come from leisure-type travel, people using trains to see family or go on vacation. It also is taking advantage of a new generation of adults who don’t drive.
“Using a train to get from Point A to Point B has become really popular,” he said. “Demand for rail travel right now is exceptionally high. Our biggest problem as a company is we don’t have enough trains and enough seats to sell people.”
The Gateway Tunnel project will help all of this. More routes mean more riders. And new trains mean a better experience, Coscia said.
“There’s a whole new generation of people now who rely on trains,” he said. “That’s who we’re building this for.”
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