Rep. Mikie Sherrill Of NJ Joins Battle To Fund Gateway Tunnel

There's a new player joining a high-stakes, bipartisan battle to fund the Gateway Project in New Jersey: U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

On Wednesday, Sherrill offered enthusiastic backing for the massive public works proposal, which would build a two-track Hudson River rail tunnel from New Jersey to Manhattan and replace the "functionally obsolete" Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River.

The projects would help alleviate chronic delays on the aging Northeast Corridor (NEC), one of the most heavily used passenger railroad lines in the nation. The affected segment of the NEC carries more than 200,000 daily Amtrak and NJ Transit riders on roughly 450 trains.

The combined cost of the projects has been estimated as high as $30 billion. Learn more about the Gateway Program here.

On Wednesday, Sherrill, a member of the Democratic party who represents the state's 11th District, announced that she signed on as an original co-sponsor to the Transportation Funding Fairness Act (TFFA). Led by U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, the bill is also co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell, Albio Sires and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

According to Sherrill, the proposed law would clarify that a state may determine whether a federally-backed and provided loan counts towards either the non-federal share or federal share of a transportation project.

If it becomes law, the bill would help to free up a critical bottleneck in plans to fund the Gateway Project, Sherrill said.

In 2017, federal transportation officials sent a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, saying that a 2015 deal allegedly made in the Obama-era to split funding 50/50 between federal and state governments was off the table.

At the heart of the dispute was New Jersey and New York's plan to pay for half of the cost of the project, with the federal government matching the other half partly through loans under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF).

• See related article: $13B Gateway Tunnel In Jeopardy; Feds Trash Obama-Era Deal

However, under the current administration, the FTA has ignored long-standing policy and arbitrarily decided that TIFIA and RRIF loans cannot be used by states, even though 23 US Code 603 states U.S. loans may be considered the federal or state share of a project, said Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor.

"The Federal Transit Administration's gambit to ignore existing laws concerning transportation funding mechanisms is malign neglect meant to kneecap the Gateway Project," the congresswoman charged Wednesday.

"We should not be playing politics with the security and safety of our commuters," Sherrill said. "This bill reaffirms the congressional intent behind current law to ensure that the most important infrastructure project in the country is not unfairly targeted by the administration."

Recently retired Rodney Frelinghuysen, the Republican who Sherrill replaced in District 11, also heartily supported the Gateway Project.

• See related article: Gateway Program Could Fix Portal Bridge Breakdowns, Gov. Murphy Says
• See related article: NY, NJ, PA Residents Overwhelmingly Support Gateway Program, Poll Says
• See related article: Ex-Daily Show Writer Supports Gateway Tunnel (VIDEO)

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File Photo: Hoboken Terminal, September 2017 (Eric Kiefer)