Letter to the Hon. Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation - Representative Sherrill Leads Two Letters to Secretary Buttigieg, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman DeFazio Highlighting Importance of Gateway Tunnel Project

Letter

Dear Secretary Buttigieg:

As Members of Congress representing states whose economies are heavily reliant on travel along the Northeast Corridor, we write to thank you for your recent announcement that the Biden administration will be moving forward with the approval process for the Gateway Tunnel project. Gateway is the nation's most critical surface infrastructure project, but the previous administration continually missed deadlines for approving the project, leading to heavy delays in planning and construction that put our regional economy at risk. We greatly appreciate the Biden administration's goal of approving the project's environmental impact statement by the end of June and would be excited to have you visit the project site to see its impact on our communities as soon as public health conditions permit.

The Gateway Tunnel project is crucial not just to New Jersey and New York, but to the economy of the entire country. It would be a transformative infrastructure improvement for the nation's busiest rail corridor, and would create significant resiliency and efficiency improvements for the entire Northeast Corridor. The century-old Hudson river tunnel connected 200,000 commuters between New Jersey and New York every day before the pandemic, but was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy. A failure of the tunnel could injure thousands and cost American businesses and households $16 billion over four years, while a partial closure of the tunnel could reduce property values by $22 billion in New Jersey alone. The Gateway Project would minimize the risk of a potentially catastrophic failure that would affect the entire country, and would modernize the rail infrastructure that millions of Americans use. New Jersey, New York, and the nation need regulatory approval to complete the Gateway Project and ensure that rail travel in the country's most populous region is both safe and efficient.

We were excited when you recognized the critical importance of Gateway and expressed your desire to move forward with the project during your Senate confirmation hearings. House Democrats similarly advocated strongly for Gateway last year through our landmark infrastructure reform package, the Moving Forward Act, which contained several funding provisions that could be used to support the completion of Gateway. We believe that this crucial support from both the Administration and Congress is the perfect opportunity to finally complete this critical infrastructure project.

Thank you for your attention regarding this important issue that will significantly affect millions of our constituents. We are very appreciative of the leadership that you and the administration have already demonstrated through your commitment to quickly approve the Hudson tunnel's environmental impact study, and we look forward to engaging further with you on this critical subject. We would also like to cordially invite you to visit the Gateway project site as soon as public health conditions allow it, so that you can see the importance of the project to our region.

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