The Gateway Development Commission (GDC) celebrated the start of tunnel boring for the Hudson Tunnel Project on September 28, per a GDC press release. After final testing in the coming days, the first machine will start digging, with a second launching soon after.
It will be the first new rail tunnel under the Hudson in more than 100 years. GDC calls the existing North River Tunnel, in service since 1910, a leading cause of train delays for hundreds of thousands of daily passengers.
The first two are single shield machines designed for hard, dry rock. Per GDC:
Cutterhead: 28 feet, 8 inches in diameter
Weight: more than 1,680 tons each
Expected pace: roughly 30 feet of tunnel per day, including scheduled maintenance pauses
Working the two parallel tubes side by side, the pair will cover 5,100 feet from North Bergen to the Hudson County Access Shaft on the border of Weehawken and Hoboken. GDC expects them to get there about a year after launch.
Schiavone Lane Dragados JV is handling this first phase under the Palisades Tunnel Project construction package, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey manages with GDC. Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said the agency is contributing $2.7 billion to Gateway.
Tag Out, Tag In:
At the shaft, the first pair comes out. A second pair, optimized for the mixed ground under the river, takes over the stretch to Manhattan.
GDC Vice Chair Tony Coscia noted the Northeast Corridor depends on a tunnel built by hand a decade before the first commercial radio broadcast. This time, the first two machines bring more than 1,680 tons of help apiece.
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