The federal government hasn’t released funding frozen during last October’s government shutdown.
Work on a $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River will stop at the end of next week if the federal government doesn’t release funds that were suspended during the government shutdown in October. The U.S. Department of Transportation is withholding funds “until the project’s contracts could be reviewed for compliance with new rules about businesses owned by women and minorities,” reports Patrick McGeehan in a New York Times article.
“The project, known as Gateway, sits at the middle of the busy Northeast Corridor rail route running from Boston to Washington and is one of the largest infrastructure initiatives in the United States. It has been under construction for more than a year after it received pledges of about $12 billion from the federal government.” According to Amtrak, a failure in the 115-year-old tunnels currently in use would reduce traffic by as much as 75 percent, crippling the key transportation corridor.
If funding isn’t renewed, work will have to stop on February 6, when a line of credit being used to pay for current construction will be exhausted.
Read the full story: Work Will Stop on Critical Tunnel Project Unless Trump Restores Funding
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