The governor, speaking in New Hampshire on the 2016 campaign trail Wednesday, told reporters the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey drafted a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx agreeing to a sit-down meeting.
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A spokesman for Christie says he’s happy to meet with them.
“We’ll work it out”, he said.
Cuomo said that if federal officials increase their commitment then New York will make the project a priority. But he said the federal government’s promise to cover $3 billion of the $14 billion project isn’t enough. Amtrak service up and down the Northeast corridor also was affected.
The bi-state agency’s director John Degnan said the feds will have to show New York and New Jersey it will put more money into a new tunnel project before the project gets moving.
Christie in 2010 killed an earlier plan to build additional tunnels supported by former Gov. Jon Corzine was killed in 2010, citing possible cost overruns. Essentially, everybody is involved is in a multi-way standoff over actually paying for the tunnel, but as the need grows increasingly desperate, someone will have to blink.
NJ Transit sustained four days of delays last week that it attributed to failures of equipment owned by Amtrak, the national passenger rail company that operates the tracks used by the commuter railroad. Consequently, Amtrak has proposed building two new Hudson River tunnels.
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Boardman said last year that Amtrak would have to close one of the two existing tunnels within the next 20 years to fix damage caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
