froze funds for the project in October<\/a>, coinciding with the beginning of the last federal government shutdown. At the time, the federal Department of Transportation said the pause would last until it completed a review of whether the project\u2019s contracts complied with the administration\u2019s new rules on women- and minority-owned businesses.<\/p>\nThe Gateway Project involves building two new train tunnels underneath the Hudson River to replace the two existing ones, which are deteriorating from 116 years of use and damage caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.<\/p>\n
Officials have warned that those tunnels, especially the North River Tunnel, need to be replaced as quickly as possible to avoid losing an essential transportation artery.\n<\/p>\n
The existing tunnels, owned and operated by Amtrak, carry tens of thousands of commuters between New York and New Jersey each weekday via Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. The tubes are also part of Amtrak\u2019s broader Northeast Corridor, a line between Boston and Washington, D.C., that carries roughly 800,000 passenger trips each day.<\/p>\n
Disaster looms without Gateway project: Schumer<\/p>\n
Any prolonged pause in the Gateway project, Schumer contended, would carry dire consequences.\n<\/p>\n
Those include losing tens of thousands of union jobs; placing further strain on the existing tunnels; potentially tanking property values; and devastating both the regional and national economies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He laid the blame for the project\u2019s likely pause squarely on Trump, arguing that the president can simply order U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to unfreeze the federal dollars.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Trump doesn\u2019t pick up that phone and give Gateway the green light, jobs will be lost; the economic output, that will evaporate; the real estate values, that will tank; all of that will be on President Trump\u2019s head,\u201d Schumer said.<\/p>\n
Alicia Glen, the GDC\u2019s New York commissioner and co-chair, also argued that the decision is entirely in Trump\u2019s hands.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be clear that there is only an audience of one, one person who needs to hear our collective voices, and we all know who that is,\u201d Glen said of Trump. \u201cSo we are telling you today on behalf of hundreds of workers, thousands of riders, millions of Americans who are counting on you, Donald Trump, must restore funding to this project.\u201d<\/p>\n
White House spokesperson Kush Desai fired back, in a statement, that it is actually Schumer and the Democrats \u201cstanding in the way\u201d of letting the money flow, rather than the president, by \u201crefusing to negotiate with the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing stopping Democrats from prioritizing the interests of Americans over illegal aliens and getting this project back on track,\u201d Desai added. His comments appeared to tie the project\u2019s future to Senate Democrats\u2019 opposition to a Trump-backed spending bill<\/a> that funds agencies carrying out his ongoing immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer warned of dire consequences if President Trump doesn\u2019t unfreeze funding for the Gateway Tunnel…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":547618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[240720,5229,240721,240722,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,24672,1807,240723,240724,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-547617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-alicia-glen","tag-america","tag-gateway-trunnel-preojct","tag-gateway-development-commission","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-pm-newsletter","tag-president-trump","tag-senate-minority-leader-charles-schumer","tag-tom-prendergast","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115969060128393452","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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