By Jack Queen and David Shepardson
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Work on the $16 billion New York City Hudson Tunnel Project will be suspended at 5 p.m. ET (2200 GMT) on Friday because President Donald Trump’s administration has refused to lift a four-month-old freeze on federal funding, the Gateway Development Commission said.
The project involves repairing an existing rail tunnel and building a new one under the Hudson River, expanding a route that is the linchpin of rail travel between New York and New Jersey.
Any failure of the existing Hudson tunnel, which was built in 1910 and heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, would hobble commuting in a metropolitan area that produces 10% of U.S. economic output and is used by over 200,000 travelers and 425 trains daily.
The Transportation Department has withheld $205 million in reimbursements for the project since October 1.
Trump has demanded Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station be renamed for him in exchange for unfreezing billions of dollars in funding for the project, a move which Democrats condemned.
Gateway said the suspension will idle 1,000 construction workers and that Trump’s decision had endangered passengers who had to rely on “decaying, century-old rail infrastructure.”
Earlier, Gateway had said work had already been suspended.
A U.S. judge will hold a hearing on Friday on an emergency request by New York and New Jersey to force the restoration of funding.
DEMOCRATS CONDEMN TRUMP FOR WITHHOLDING FUNDS
Trump last month asked Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer to back the renaming of Washington Dulles Airport and Penn Station, but the New York lawmaker told the White House he did not have the power to rename them, a source told Reuters.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment and Schumer’s office declined to comment.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker told a press conference near the project on Friday that Trump was holding the tunnel hostage because he “seems to want to put his name on everything.”
Since returning to office in January, the Republican president has affixed his name to prominent Washington buildings, a planned class of Navy warships, a visa program for wealthy foreigners, a government-run prescription drug website, and federal savings accounts for children.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, called Trump’s suggestion ridiculous.
“These naming rights aren’t tradable as part of any negotiations, and neither is the dignity of New Yorkers… The president continues to put his own narcissism over the good-paying union jobs this project provides and the extraordinary economic impact the Gateway tunnel will bring.”
The project was allocated about $15 billion in federal support under former President Joe Biden. It is intended to repair the existing tunnel and construct a new one for passenger railroad Amtrak and state commuter lines between New Jersey and Manhattan.
Nearly $2 billion has been spent on the project so far.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Jack Queen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nia Williams)
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