A joint venture of Barnard Construction Co. Inc., Bozeman, Mont., and Judlau Contracting Inc., College Point, N.Y., edged out two other prequalified teams to win a $583-million contract to bore a pair of 16,500-ft-long, 27-ft-dia., tunnels averaging 120-ft deep for the Manhattan portion of an $8.7-billion second mass-transit tunnel linking New York's Pennsylvania Station to New Jersey. Directors of project owner, New Jersey Transit, unanimously approved the contract on Dec. 9.

Proposals for a related tunnel contract under New Jersey's Palisades rock formation, estimated at $250 million, will be due Dec. 15, says a New Jersey Transit spokesman They are the first two of three major tunneling contracts for the Mass Transit Tunnel project, set to be the nation's largest mass transit public works project, that will be overseen also by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.