Work resumes on Hudson River tunnel following funding freeze

Evan Simko-Bednarski, New York Daily News on Feb 24, 2026

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NEW YORK — Work on the waylaid Hudson River tunnel resumed Tuesday.

Multiple sources familiar with the project confirmed to the New York Daily News that work began again on the project that has laid fallow for weeks amid funding interference from the Trump administration.

A spokesman for the Gateway Development Commission, the bistate body in charge of the tunnel’s construction, initially declined to confirm The News’ reporting, but later released a statement announcing that crews would soon be back at work.

“Our workers continued to hang tough through the construction pause, and together we will keep this project on track,” Gateway’s CEO, Thomas Prendergast, said in a statement. “I will do everything possible to restore consistent and reliable funding to deliver this project for our workers, our riders, and the national economy.”

A source familiar with the construction work said that project managers had already been back at it Monday, despite the blizzard, to prep for work to begin anew Tuesday.

The resumption comes less than a week after the Trump administration finally released more than $200 million in congressionally-approved funding it had held up since October, forcing the project to deplete a line of contingency credit before halting work this month.

Some 1,000 construction workers were laid off as the Gateway Development Commission mothballed the project. The commission indicated Tuesday that all of those workers were expected to be rehired.

The federal government, under the Biden administration, agreed to fund more than 70% of the $16 billion tunnel, a crucial component of the larger Gateway Project, which is meant to double the number of rail lines across the New Jersey Meadowlands connecting the Garden State to Manhattan’s Penn Station.

But the project became a punching bag for the feds in the early hours of last year’s government shutdown, when the Trump administration announced it was cutting funding to the Hudson River tunnel and the MTA’s Second Ave. subway project, allegedly over a last-minute change in contracting rules.

Since then, President Donald Trump has personally declared the project dead, citing its support by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as the reason. In press statements, a White House flack said the funding freeze was in response to Democratic lack of support for Trump’s unpopular immigration enforcement.

And, as reported by The News and others, Trump reportedly agreed to restore the funding if Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport were named after him — reports the president called “JUST MORE FAKE NEWS” in a post on his personal social media site.

Last week’s unfrozen funding comes as the Gateway Development Commission, New York State and New Jersey continue to duke it out with the federal government in court. Any restoration in funding could be temporary should the courts decide the Trump administration was within its rights to withhold funding promised to the project by Congress.

Because of that, the commission said Tuesday that, despite the resumption of work, it would hold off on awarding two upcoming construction contracts until it was sure all federal funding owed the project would be delivered.

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