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

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

under

Upper New York Bay New York Harbor is a bay that covers all of the Upper Bay. It is at the mouth of the Hudson River near the East River tidal estuary on the East Coast of the United States. New York Harbor is generally synonymous with Upper New York Bay ...

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 metropolitan area, New York-Newark metropolitan area, encompassing the region within approximately a radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. It includes the sy ...

between northeastern New Jersey and

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

, including southern and eastern

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. 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 (state), New York and New Jersey, established in 1921 through an interstate c ...

released a Tier 1 Draft

Environmental Impact Statement An environmental impact statement (EIS), under United States environmental law, is a document required by the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An E ...

(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 railways 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

and nearby areas of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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), Long Island and

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

must cross the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

using the Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge which is north of New York City at Selkirk,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, making a detour known as the " Selkirk hurdle." Partly as a result, less than 3% by weight of the area's freight is said to move by rail. The former

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

planned a freight railroad tunnel between

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

and

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is the southernmost of the boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York (state), New York. The borough is separated from the ad ...

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 Pennsylvania Station (also known as New York Penn Station or simply Penn Station) is the main intercity railroad station in New York City and the busiest transportation facility in the Western Hemisphere, serving more than 600,000 passengers ...

, generally used only for

passenger train A passenger train is a train used to transport people along a railroad line, as opposed to a freight train that carries goods. These trains may consist of unpowered passenger railroad cars (also known as coaches or carriages) push-pull train, ...

s, were used briefly for freight during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

to relieve congestion at the barge transport

docks The word dock () in American English refers to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore). In British English, the term is not used the same way as in American Engli ...

, 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 from the state of New York. A Manhattan resident and a member of the Democratic Party, he has served as the U.S. representative for since 2023. Nadler was first ...

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

City government A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

, the

New York City Economic Development Corporation New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is a public-benefit corporation that serves as the official economic development organization for New York City. NYCEDC gives its mission as strengthening business confidence in New York C ...

commissioned a study of rail freight traffic across

New York Harbor New York Harbor is a bay that covers all of the Upper Bay. It is at the mouth of the Hudson River near the East River tidal estuary on the East Coast of the United States. New York Harbor is generally synonymous with Upper New York Bay, ...

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

and

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

as well as Nassau and

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

counties, with a combined population of 7.7 million. It is served by the

Long Island Rail Road The Long Island Rail Road , or LIRR, is a Rail transport, railroad in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, stretching from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County on Long Islan ...

, 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 30,000 carloads each year. The NYA connects with

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of track, it is the lead ...

via the Hell Gate Bridge to CSX Transportation's

Oak Point Yard The Oak Point Yard is a freight railroad rail yard, yard located in Hunts Point, Bronx, Hunts Point, The 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 ...

in the Bronx. It also connects to CSX and

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

in the Greenville section of Jersey City, NJ, via a cross harbor float barge service, the New York New Jersey Rail, LLC, 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 Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge, 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 Port Liberty 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 side of ...

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 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

and between Brooklyn and

Jersey City Jersey City is the List of municipalities in New Jersey, second-most populous

, plus increased barge transport of railcars across

. 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 *** Respirator, a ma ...

to operate diesel locomotives would be practical. Probably mindful of environmental issues that were key elements in the 1985 cancellation of the Westway project, the New York City Industrial Development Agency 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, Modular construction, constructed elsewhere and floated to the tunnel site to be sunk into place and then linked together. They are commonly used for road an ...

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, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, 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 a ...

, 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 railroa ...

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 The Channel Tunnel (), sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau, portmanteau Chunnel, is a undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at ...

*Rail tunnel with

Automated Guided Vehicle An automated guided vehicle (AGV), different from an autonomous mobile robot (AMR), is a portable robot that follows along marked long lines or wires on the floor, or uses radio waves, vision cameras, magnets, or lasers for navigation. They ar ...

s *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 Alignment may refer to: Archaeology * Alignment (archaeology), a co-linear arrangement of features or structures with external landmarks * Stone alignment, a linear arrangement of upright, parallel megalithic standing stones Biology * Struc ...

favored for a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel is between portals (access points) located in

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...

's Greenville Yard in Jersey City and along the

's Bay Ridge Branch 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 A right of way (also right-of-way) is a specific route that people, animals, vehicles, watercraft, or utility lines travel, or the legal status that gives them the right to do so. Rights-of-way in the physical sense include controlled-access h ...

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 freight, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construct ...

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 in Bergen County, New Jersey, with the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named after George W ...

and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge going to or from parts of

, 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 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 station, bus terminal located in Manhattan in New York City. It is the busiest bus terminal in the world by volume of traffic, serving ab ...

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 using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

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 mens ...

(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 Yor ...

(I-278), where Nichols Copper and later Phelps Dodge 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 Newtown Creek, a long tributary of the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City. River engineering#Channelization, Channelization made it one of the most heavily-use ...

. 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 Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He served as the 108th mayo ...

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 The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...

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 c ...

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 track (r ...

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 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 Administration

NYNJ Railroad
{{attached KML, display=inline,title Railroad tunnels in New Jersey Railroad tunnels in New York City Tunnels in Brooklyn 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