NYC Gateway Project TBMs Near Completion, on Track for 2026 Tunneling Start

Boring machines each weighing 1,680 tons will begin carving parallel tubes from New Jersey side next year

The Manhattan Tunnel Project will build the portion of the tunnel from the Manhattan bulkhead to the Hudson Yards Concrete Casing. — Courtesy of Gateway Development Commission

The Palisades Tunnel Project will construct the first mile of twin tunnels on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. Early work, including pile driving and installation of monitoring instruments, is in progress.

Manufacture of the tunnel boring machines that will excavate the first mile of the Gateway Project's Hudson River tunnel in New Jersey is nearing completion, marking a major step toward launching in 2026, the Gateway Development Commission said Aug. 20.

The two Herrenknecht TBMs are 85% and 73% complete respectively, with the first unit expected to finish in the coming weeks and both completed by November. Following factory testing and acceptance this fall, the TBMs will be shipped to New Jersey, reassembled at the North Bergen launch site in preparation to begin tunneling next year.

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“The start of tunnel boring next year will mark the beginning of a new chapter for the Hudson Tunnel Project,” New York GDC Commissioner and Co-Chair Alicia Glen, New Jersey GDC Commissioner and Co-Chair Balpreet Grewal-Virk, and GDC Amtrak Commissioner and Vice Chair Tony Coscia said in a joint statement. “We eagerly anticipate seeing these machines fully assembled and ready for launch next year.”

GDC CEO Tom Prendergast said that even with modern mechanized tunneling, “the process of building a concrete tube under a river is still a remarkable challenge,” noting the nearly two years of advance work to prepare for the machines’ arrival and the “thousands of people across multiple construction teams” working to keep the milestone on schedule.

Preparing for Launch

The TBMs will excavate two parallel tubes for roughly one mile from the portal at Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen to an access shaft in Hudson County. Each machine weighs 1,680 tons, with a cutterhead 28 ft, 8 in. in dia and trailing gantries stretching about 500 ft.

Tunnel Boring Machines are in production, and tunnel boring is expected to launch next year. Image: Herrenknecht

Equipped with more than 1,000 sensors to track position, component wear, air quality and other metrics, the machines are expected to advance about 30 ft per day while installing precast concrete liners.

Accounting for planned maintenance—such as replacing worn cutterhead disks—the New Jersey drives are expected to take about a year.

GDC representatives plan to travel to the TBM factory this fall for testing and formal acceptance before shipment to New Jersey. After reassembly in North Bergen, the commission plans to start tunnel boring in 2026.

The machines are being built at Herrenknecht’s facilities in Germany. The manufacturer also has supplied TBMs for New York City’s East Side Access tunnels and numerous international metro projects.

By cutterhead size, the Hudson tunnel TBMs are smaller than the 57.5-ft-dia TBM “Bertha” that excavated Seattle’s SR 99 tunnel but larger than those used for East Side Access, which ranged from 22 ft to 26 ft in diameter. The Hudson tunnel TBM “twins” have yet to receive a nickname.

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At the same meeting, the GDC board authorized a new contract with Gateway Trans Hudson Partnership Engineering, a joint venture of WSP, AECOM and STV, to serve as the engineer of record and provide engineering services during construction for the remaining Hudson Tunnel Project packages. The joint venture's bid was the only one submitted to GDC, and has already been working on the project in this capacity under an earlier contract with Amtrak.

Commissioners also approved a project labor agreement for the New Jersey Surface Alignment contract, setting uniform employment terms for contractors and subcontractors on that work.

The Hudson Tunnel Project—along with plans to rehabilitate the existing North River tunnels—anchors the broader Gateway Program to add resiliency and capacity on the Northeast Corridor, which carries more than 2,200 daily train movements and 800,000 passenger trips.

Bryan Gottlieb is the online editor at Engineering News-Record (ENR).

Gottlieb is a five-time Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism award winner with more than a decade of experience covering business, construction and community issues, including finance, law and real estate. He has reported for Adweek and the San Diego Daily Transcript and led a community newsroom in Santa Monica, Calif. He served as editor-in-chief of the Detroit Metro Times and as managing editor at Roofing Contractor, where he helped shape national industry coverage. At Engineering News-Record, Gottlieb covers breaking news, large-scale infrastructure and megaprojects, regulatory developments and business trends across the U.S. and global construction sectors.

email: gottliebb@enr.com | office: (248) 786-1591