GOP Policies Put Northeast Transportation Corridor At Risk

Way back in 2010, when Chris Christie was trying to begin to burnish his conservative credentials in order to some day run for President, he was in a bind. The New Jersey highway transportation fund used to maintain the state's roads and bridges was woefully underfunded and it would require a hike in the ridiculously low gas tax in order to replenish it. But that would be a tax hike, an anathema to conservatives, and something Christie just could not broach if he wanted to woo the right of his party. So Christie did what all good Republicans do these days. He gutted an investment in the future to pay for his political ambitions today.

The program Christie decided to raid was something called the ARC project which would have built two new rail tunnels into Manhattan from New Jersey, potentially completed by 2018 and allowing necessary repair and upgrade work on the two existing tunnels that have been in service for over 100 years. Christie's decision effectively killed the project. Again, like all Republicans these days, Christie couched his decision to pull out of the ARC project as a bold stroke of fiscal responsibility, claiming, falsely, that New Jersey would bear 70% of any cost overruns when the actual number was 15%. Instead, Christie used the nearly $2 billion from ARC to replenish the state's transportation fund.

That decision proved to be fateful when Hurricane Sandy ravaged those two ancient tunnels, and, at some point soon, Amtrak will be forced to close one of them for extensive repairs, assuming the infrastructure inside the tunnels does not collapse first. In the end, the whole charade was for naught anyway. Christie was eventually forced to raise the gas tax last summer after it again ran dry, and after Christie forced a government shutdown. In fact, Christie's entire tenure as New Jersey's governor has seen the erosion of the state's transportation infrastructure.

After a six year delay, a new plan, called the Gateway Project, was created last year for the necessary new rail tunnels. But the project may not be completed until 2030, if at all. That's because the project will rely on some degree of federal funding. The current agreement provides for the states of New York and New Jersey to bear 50% of the cost of the project, with federal funding to fill the rest. Under a Republican-controlled Congress and the inept and heartless Trump administration, that funding will probably not be forthcoming.

Without that funding, the project can not even begin, much less finish. Every year of delay probably adds about $100 million to the overall cost and increase the chances that one of the existing tunnels will collapse, creating a transportation nightmare for the entire Northeast Corridor. But it will all be OK, because Republicans will get the tax cuts they want.