The Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel (also known as the Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel) is a proposed

freight rail transport Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (International Union of Railways) haule ...

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

under

Upper New York Bay New York Harbor is at the mouth of the Hudson River where it empties into New York Bay near the East River tidal estuary, and then into the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the United States. It is one of the largest natural harbors in t ...

in the

Port of New York and New Jersey The Port of New York and New Jersey is the port district of the New York-Newark metropolitan area, encompassing the region within approximately a radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. It includes the system of navigable water ...

between

northeastern New Jersey The Gateway Region is the primary urbanized area of the northeastern section of New Jersey. It is anchored by Newark, the state's most populous city. While sometimes known as the Newark metropolitan area, it is part of the New York metropolitan ...

and Long Island, including southern and eastern

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. In November 2014, the

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, PANYNJ; stylized, in logo since 2020, as Port Authority NY NJ, is a joint venture between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, established in 1921 through an interstate compact authorize ...

released a Tier 1 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for its Cross Harbor Freight Program. It reviewed four waterborne and four tunnel alternatives. Estimated costs for the waterborne alternatives ranged from $95 to 190 million, and from $7 to 11 billion for the tunnel alternatives. On September 25, 2015, the Tier 1 Final Environmental Impact Statement was released, which narrowed the alternatives to two, an enhanced railcar float operation and a basic rail tunnel, both between New Jersey and Brooklyn. A phased plan starting with building the enhanced car float was proposed. In early May 2017, the Port Authority issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a “Tier II” Environmental Impact Study of the rail tunnel and enhanced railcar float alternatives. A $23.7 million, three-year contract for the Tier II study was awarded in early 2018. The Tier II study was suspended during the Covid-19 crisis, but was restarted in February 2022.

History

Direct connections for

rail freight Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (International Union of Railways) hauled ...

between Long Island and nearby areas of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

have long been limited. At present, freight trains from the west and south destined for

(except for Staten Island, via the

Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge The Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Railroad Bridge is a rail vertical-lift bridge connecting Elizabethport, New Jersey and the Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island, New York, United States. The bridge was built by the Baltimore and Ohio Rai ...

), Long Island and

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

must cross the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

using the Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge which is north of New York City at Selkirk, New York, making a detour known as the "

Selkirk hurdle The Selkirk Hurdle is the term used by urban planners, railroad employees, politicians, and others to describe the route that must be taken by freight trains traveling between New York City and other points in downstate New York that are east of ...

." Partly as a result, less than 3% by weight of the area's freight is said to move by rail. The former Pennsylvania Railroad planned a freight railroad tunnel between

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and Staten Island in 1893, but the project was never carried out. Attempts by government planners to revive the project from the 1920s through the 1940s did not succeed. The Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad tunnels through New York Penn Station, generally used only for passenger trains, were used briefly for freight during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

to relieve congestion at the barge transport docks, but today's passenger and commuter traffic frequencies are at capacity and preclude freight movements. Proposals for a cross-harbor tunnel were floated as early as the 1920s. In the early 1990s, U.S. Representative

Jerrold Nadler Jerrold Lewis Nadler (; born June 13, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician who since 2013 has served as the U.S. representative for , which includes Manhattan's west side and parts of Brooklyn. A member of the Democratic Party, he is in ...

revived interest in direct connection of rail freight to Long Island, hoping to reduce truck traffic through Manhattan. With support from the City government, the

New York City Economic Development Corporation New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is a nonprofit corporation whose stated mission is to "leverage the city’s assets to create beneficial jobs that drive growth. This ensures equitable and sustainable development across al ...

commissioned a study of rail freight traffic across New York Harbor. The Cross Harbor Freight Movement Major Investment Study received $4 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation and $1 million from the New York City Industrial Development Agency. Edwards and Kelcey, a transportation engineering firm in

Morristown, NJ Morristown () is a town and the county seat of Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

, was hired to study the feasibility of alternative approaches to increased rail access for freight. The idea of a cross-harbor rail tunnel also received support from Connecticut transportation planners, who believed such a rail connection would reduce truck traffic on the heavily congested

Connecticut Turnpike The Connecticut Turnpike (officially the Governor John Davis Lodge Turnpike) is a controlled-access highway and former toll road in the U.S. state of Connecticut; it is maintained by the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT). Span ...

. The proposed tunnel would primarily serve Long Island, which includes the New York City boroughs of

and

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

as well as Nassau and Suffolk counties, with a combined population of 7.7 million. It is served by the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter railroad in North America. Rail freight service on Long Island is provided by the New York and Atlantic railroad (NYA), which operates on LIRR tracks and carries about 20,000 carloads each year. The NYA connects with CSX Transportation via the

Hell Gate Bridge The Hell Gate Bridge, originally the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge or the East River Arch Bridge, is a steel through arch railroad bridge in New York City. Originally built for four tracks, the bridge currently carries two tracks of Amtr ...

to CSX Transportation's

Oak Point Yard The Oak Point Yard is a freight railroad yard located in the South Bronx, New York City. The yard is owned by CSX Transportation, and is a base for CSX's local deliveries in the area, including to the Hunts Point Cooperative Market and for trai ...

in the Bronx. It also connects to CSX and

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

in the Greenville section of Jersey City, NJ, via a cross harbor float barge service, the

New York New Jersey Rail, LLC New York New Jersey Rail, LLC is a switching and terminal railroad that operates the only car float operation across Upper New York Bay between Jersey City, New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York. Since mid-November 2008, it has been owned by t ...

, currently owned by the

. The New York City boroughs of the Bronx and Staten Island have active rail freight connections, via the Oak Point Link and the

, respectively. The latter connects Staten Island with rail lines west of the Hudson, and serves the

Howland Hook Marine Terminal The Howland Hook Marine Terminal, operating as ‘’’GCT New York,’’’ is a container port facility in the Port of New York and New Jersey located at Howland Hook in northwestern Staten Island, New York City. It is situated on the east ...

and a municipal waste facility, but there are no rail connections between Staten Island and the rest of New York City or Long Island. Manhattan last saw freight service in 1983. The West Side freight line was partially converted to passenger service to

Pennsylvania Station Pennsylvania Station (often abbreviated Penn Station) is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to several of its grand passenger terminals. Several are still in active use by Amtrak and other transportation services; others have been ...

in 1991, with the West Side freight yards replaced by Riverside South and the elevated portion south of 30th street converted into High Line Park.

Feasibility and environmental issue studies

In its summer 2000 report, Edwards and Kelcey evaluated proposals for rail tunnels between

and Staten Island and between Brooklyn and Jersey City, plus increased barge transport of railcars across New York Harbor. It estimated a pair of tunnels between Jersey City and Brooklyn to cost $2.15 billion, not including track connections or track improvements. Despite the length of the tunnels being considered, up to under water, the study found that providing enough

ventilation Ventilation may refer to: * Ventilation (physiology), the movement of air between the environment and the lungs via inhalation and exhalation ** Mechanical ventilation, in medicine, using artificial methods to assist breathing *** Ventilator, a m ...

to operate diesel locomotives would be practical. Probably mindful of

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

issues that were key elements in the 1985 cancellation of the Westway project, the

New York City Industrial Development Agency New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is a nonprofit corporation whose stated mission is to "leverage the city’s assets to create beneficial jobs that drive growth. This ensures equitable and sustainable development across al ...

commissioned an environmental assessment. This assessment found that

immersed tube An immersed tube (or immersed tunnel) is a kind of undersea tunnel composed of segments, constructed elsewhere and floated to the tunnel site to be sunk into place and then linked together. They are commonly used for road and rail crossings of ...

construction would be environmentally more hazardous and more expensive than bored tunnel construction. Ventilation was confirmed as practical and found unlikely to present greater hazards than fumes from trucks that would otherwise be used to transport freight. Following the feasibility and environmental studies, two organizations were formed to plan and promote a tunnel project and to seek government funding. They are the Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project, hosted by the

STV Group STV Group plc (formerly known as Scottish Television plc, Scottish Media Group plc and SMG plc) is a media company based in Glasgow, Scotland. Beginning as a television broadcaster in 1957, the company expanded into newspapers, advertising and r ...

, a construction firm in New York City and Douglassville,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and the Cross-Harbor Tunnel Coalition, also known as "MoveNYNJ" or "Move NY & NJ". The Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project is supported by funds from the U.S.

Federal Highway Administration The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two programs, the Federal-aid Highway Program ...

, the U.S.

Federal Railroad Administration The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is an agency in the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). The agency was created by the Department of Transportation Act of 1966. The purpose of the FRA is to promulgate and enforce rail saf ...

and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, while the Cross-Harbor Tunnel Coalition is a voluntary organization of business, union and political leaders. Political activity led to authorization of $100 million for a Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel as a federal transportation project in the U.S. Transportation Equity Act of 2005.

2014 Draft Environmental Impact Study

The 2014 Tier 1 Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) considered 29 alternatives and selected ten for further study, including five tunnel options and five waterborne options. The tunnel options considered include the following: *Rail tunnel *Rail tunnel with shuttle service from Pennsylvania *Rail tunnel with "Chunnel" service patterned after the truck movement system used on the England-France Channel Tunnel *Rail tunnel with Automated Guided Vehicles *Rail and truck tunnel shared 12 hours for trucks and 12 hours for rail The waterborne options include enhanced rail float operations, going beyond what the improvements the Port Authority has already committed to, and four options involve transporting trucks or shipping containers across the harbor by boat. The latter group includes *Truck float *Truck ferry *Lift on lift off (LOLO) – lifting containers on and off a barge *Roll on roll off (RORO) – a vessel designed to allow wheeled trucks or trailers to be driven onboard The DEIS Executive Summary (Table ES-6) lists the following costs and benefits for the various options: Only the enhanced rail float and the basic rail tunnel options were selected in the Final EIS for Tier II analysis.

Facilities

The proposed Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel tubes would be large enough to take double-stacked container cars. According to the Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project, the alignment favored for a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel is between portals (access points) located in Conrail's

Greenville Yard Greenville Yard is a freight rail yard in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It is located on Upper New York Bay in Jersey City, New Jersey adjacent and north of Port Jersey. Originally developed in 1904 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, it was la ...

in Jersey City and along the Long Island Rail Road's

Bay Ridge Branch The Bay Ridge Branch is a rail line owned by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and operated by the New York and Atlantic Railway in New York City. It is the longest freight-only line of the LIRR, connecting the Montauk Branch and CSX Transporta ...

in Brooklyn, crossing the middle of the Upper Harbor, with a length of .

Other infrastructure

During the environmental assessment, existing rail infrastructure was surveyed for compatibility with a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel. Parts of the existing trackage need repair. Some

rights of way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

have been reduced to single-track width or were never wider and are in deteriorating condition due to their little use and maintenance. Nearly all track segments lack enough clearance above the tracks for the envisaged double-stacked container cars. Such factors limit the effective capacity of a rail tunnel and will add substantial cost to overcome. Rail yards east of New York Harbor lack a trans-shipment terminal with enough capacity to transfer the freight coming through a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel to trucks. A proposal was generated to acquire of land to build one in West Maspeth,

. Studies performed for the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel say about 30,000

truck A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...

s per day cross the

George Washington Bridge The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Manhattan in New York City. The bridge is named after George Washington, the first president of the United S ...

and the

Verrazano Narrows Bridge The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( ) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay an ...

going to or from parts of Long Island, including

and

, or about 10 million trucks per year.

2015 Final Tier I Draft Environmental Impact Statement

The Final Tier I Draft Environmental Impact Statement recommends further study of two alternatives: enhanced rail float operations and the most basic rail tunnel among the tunnel alternatives. While the rail float alternative is expected to produce less freight tonnage diversion than the tunnel (2.8 million tons per year vs 9.6), its costs are dramatically less, $175 million vs. $7.2 billion. The EIS recommends a phased approach, starting by building enhanced float service for carload freight, adding capacity for intermodal traffic, developing needed intermodal facilities on Long Island and finally planning and building the rail freight tunnel. Port Authority Chairman John J. Degnan expressed doubts about the freight rail tunnel alternative in light of competing demands on Port Authority resources, including the

Gateway Project The Gateway Program (originally Gateway Project) is the planned phased expansion and renovation of the Northeast Corridor (NEC) rail line between Newark, New Jersey and New York City, New York. The right-of-way runs between Newark Penn Station ...

passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson, which is estimated to cost $20 billion, and a new

Port Authority Bus Terminal The Port Authority Bus Terminal (colloquially known as the Port Authority and by its acronym PABT) is a bus terminal located in Manhattan in New York City. It is the busiest bus terminal in the world by volume of traffic, serving about 8,000 buse ...

costing up to $10 billion. "It's hard for me to imagine, given the competing demands for the federal government fund for other projects, that it would commit to funding at a cost on that order of magnitude."

Tier II efforts

In July 2017, the Port Authority announced it had allocated $35 million to the study of the tunnel suitable for freight. In February 2018, the Port Authority awarded a $23.7 million contract to Cross Harbor Partners, a joint venture of STV Incorporated and AKRF Inc., to develop a Tier II Environmental Impact Statement. The Tier II process is expected to take three years.

Criticism

Some critics object that improving

rail transport Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a p ...

with a tunnel would provide little traffic reduction relative to its high cost. The West Maspeth facility has been heavily criticized. It is proposed for an industrial site about four blocks south of the interchange between the

Long Island Expressway Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music men ...

(I-495) and the

Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Interstate 278 (I-278) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway in New Jersey and New York in the United States. The road runs from US Route 1/9 (US 1/9) in Linden, New Jersey, northeast to the Bruckner Interchange in the New York ...

(I-278), where Nichols Copper and later

Phelps Dodge Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelps, James & Co., the part of the o ...

operated a copper refinery for decades. The copper plant closed in 1983, and the site has been largely vacant since then, although a new food warehouse was completed at its eastern end in 2005. It abuts the heavily polluted Newtown Creek. Although the Cross-Harbor tunnel terminal site is close to two major highways and existing rail, many access routes pass through residential neighborhoods. Based on the estimates of the rail tunnel's capacity, traffic to and from the site could reach thousands of truck trips per day. However, most of those trucks already travel through those highways to use the existing bridge connection. Spokespersons for neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens strongly object to land being designated for a trans-shipment terminal or other railroad uses and to the noise and vibration expected from passage of up to 1,600 rail cars per day. Reacting to these criticisms, in March 2005 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he opposed the rail tunnel project. However, in early July 2007, Mayor Bloomberg told Rep. Nadler he would be willing to take another look at the plan. A City University of New York study, published in 2011, pointed out that "no current demand for a containerized truck-rail facility has yet been demonstrated" on Long Island, in part because long-distance trucks, including intermodal containers, generally must be unloaded at major

distribution center A distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building, often with refrigeration or air conditioning, which is stocked with products (goods) to be redistributed to retailers, to wholesalers, or directly to co ...

s which typically serve an entire metropolitan area. Few such distribution centers are located on Long Island. The study also noted that standard double stack rail equipment is too wide to run on tracks where

third rail A third rail, also known as a live rail, electric rail or conductor rail, is a method of providing electric power to a railway locomotive or train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway ...

is used, as it is on much of the Long Island Rail Road's passenger routes. Concern has been expressed about the project's impact on Port Authority toll revenue. The proposed "MoveNY" transportation plan would use right-of-way needed for the tunnel project, including the Bay Ridge branch, to build a new Triboro RX subway service connecting The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, potentially interfering with the right-of-way's use for rail freight. A feasibility study for the Interborough Express project, which would implement part of the Triboro RX route, indicated that both projects could potentially co-exist. Former executive director of the PANYNJ,

Christopher O. Ward Christopher Owen Ward (born 1954) is an American civil servant who served as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from May 22, 2008, until November 1, 2011, and as New York City Department of Environmental Protecti ...

has come out forcefully against the project.

References

Notes Citations

External links

Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project
Several planning documents at this site.
U.S. Federal Railroad AdministrationNYNJ Railroad
{{attached KML, display=inline,title Railroad tunnels in New Jersey Railroad tunnels in New York City Tunnels in Hudson County, New Jersey Rail freight transportation in New York City Crossings of the Hudson River Port of New York and New Jersey Proposed tunnels in the United States Proposed railway lines in New York (state) Proposed railway lines in New Jersey Proposed railway tunnels in North America