Work on the Gateway rail project, idled since early February amid legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s funding freeze, is expected to resume next week.
The roughly 1,000 workers who were off the job, though, may have to adjust their routines.
“We need to assess exactly what impact to this — to the schedule and budget of the program — this two-week stoppage will have with the intent of trying to get it back on schedule and within budget,” Tom Prendergast, chief executive officer of the Gateway Development Commission, told NJ Spotlight News.
By a federal appellate court’s order, the commission has the expected $205 million in congressionally approved funding that Trump had withheld for Hudson River passenger rail tunnels and related construction. As two lawsuits were underway against Trump — one by the commission, the other by New York and New Jersey — the project’s overseers kept in contact with contractors.
“We’ve kept the contractors fully informed as to what’s going on,” with both sides sharing information, Prendergast said. One worry, if the funding holdup were prolonged, was the potential to lose workers with “knowledge about the uniqueness of the job,” he said.
“We’re confident we’re going to get the critical mass of those workers back,” he said.
Prendergast rejected Trump’s assertion, made on Truth Social on Monday, that Gateway was a “future boondoggle” that will cost billions of dollars more than budgeted.
Gateway is the biggest infrastructure project in the country, Prendergast pointed out.
“There will be issues that we need to manage effectively,” Prendergast said. “There will be problems on any project of this magnitude. It’s about the timely identification of the problem and the implementation of an action to mitigate the effects of that problem.”
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