The Gateway Development Commission (GDC) announced a major milestone for the Hudson Tunnel Project, with the first tunnel boring machine officially beginning mining operations on schedule in New Jersey.
A second tunnel boring machine is slated to launch in the coming weeks.
The massive machines will construct the initial 5,100 feet of the new rail tunnel tubes, running from the tunnel portal in North Bergen to the Hudson County Access Shaft located on the border of Weehawken and Hoboken. Once they reach the access shaft, the machines will be extracted and replaced with a second pair engineered specifically for the mixed ground conditions beneath the Hudson River.
Operating at a pace of roughly 30 feet per day—including scheduled maintenance windows—the current section of the tunnel tubes is expected to take approximately one year to complete.
“Before our tunnel boring machine started digging, it had been nearly 120 years since the last train tunnel under the Hudson River was excavated,” Alicia Glen, New York GDC Commissioner and Co-Chair; Balpreet Grewal-Virk, New Jersey GDC Commissioner and Co-Chair; and Tony Coscia, GDC Amtrak Commissioner and Vice Chair, said in a joint statement. “We are far overdue for an upgrade, and the hundreds of thousands of riders who deal with the fallout from train delays know it. With the start of tunnel boring operations, we showed that we are taking action to deliver the modern infrastructure America needs.”
GDC Chief Executive Officer Tom Prendergast echoed the sentiment, noting the gravity of the achievement.
“When the first tunnel boring machine’s cutterhead bit into the rock face in the launch box, GDC reached the most significant Hudson Tunnel Project delivery milestone to date on schedule,” Prendergast said. “This is a major achievement that would not have been possible without the hundreds of people who have worked together to plan, design, and build the infrastructure and equipment needed for this incredible machine to do what it was made to do.”
The launched machinery features a 28-foot, 8-inch-diameter cutterhead and trailing gantries stretching roughly 500 feet, weighing in at more than 1,680 tons. Operating as single-shield hard-rock borers, the machines excavate the rock face using embedded disc cutters while simultaneously erecting precast concrete segments to form the permanent tunnel lining.
This initial stretch of boring and construction of the Hudson County Access Shaft fall under the Palisades Tunnel Project package, being led by Schiavone Lane Dragados JV with project delivery managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in partnership with the GDC.
As the cornerstone of the larger Gateway Program, the Hudson Tunnel Project aims to modernize the nation’s most congested stretch of passenger rail, connecting New Jersey and New York while eventually allowing for the vital rehabilitation of the existing, century-old North River Tunnel.
