Dear Colleagues,
Today, the federal government completed an environmental review and issued a decision that will shape our region and benefit our customers for decades to come. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) issued the Record of Decision (ROD) and the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Hudson Tunnel Project. In fact, I had the honor of signing the FEIS yesterday as a co-applicant along with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
This project, as many of you know, will build two new tunnels in order for the existing, century-old tunnels to be taken out of service one track at a time, to be rehabilitated. When we’re done, we will have four tracks going into and out of Penn Station New York, significantly improving capacity, reliability and service delivery for both NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak customers on the most critical piece of infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston.
The FEIS and ROD represent a major step forward for a region-changing project that – like our Portal North Bridge Replacement Project – will provide more reliable and resilient service along the busiest rail corridor in the nation. Combined with Portal North – which continues to advance and remains on track for a construction award by the end of this year – we are positioning the entire Northeast Corridor to safely and reliably meet the demands of
NJ TRANSIT customers for generations to come.
Achieving this milestone didn’t happen without a significant amount of work by NJ TRANSIT staff. I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge a few key members our team who have been instrumental in today’s announcement, including RJ Palladino who has done yeoman’s work leading the effort on the development of the FEIS and ROD, along with Ayelet Hirschkorn, Jeremy Colangelo-Bryan, John Geitner and Dara Callender, among others. It is another huge victory for our agency, our customers, and our entire region.
I hope you all enjoy a safe and happy Memorial Day Weekend!
Kevin
