Christie cancels rail tunnel to Manhattan

TRENTON - Gov. Christie on Thursday canceled plans to build a new rail tunnel to link New Jersey with Manhattan, saying it faced billions of dollars in cost overruns.

The project, which was started in June 2009 and projected at that time to cost $8.7 billion, would have been the nation's largest public-works project.

Christie said his advisers had determined that the project would cost as much as $14 billion before it was completed in 2018 and that "we simply can't spend what we don't have."

Democrats in Congress and the state Legislature immediately assailed Christie's decision, as did some environmental groups and transit advocates. State Republican legislators, however, defended the decision as in the interest of New Jersey taxpayers.

Democrats said the state would be required to repay $300 million in federal funds already spent on the project. And they said the cancellation would leave more motorists stuck in traffic, and rail passengers on train lines already at capacity.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.) predicted that killing the tunnel project "will go down as one of the biggest public-policy blunders in New Jersey's history."

Now, $3 billion in federal aid committed to the tunnel will go back to Washington for use in other states' mass-transit projects, Lautenberg said.

Instead of "getting a major investment from the federal government, New Jersey taxpayers now owe the federal government $300 million plus interest and penalties as a result of the governor giving up on the tunnel," said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.). "That's on top of the $300 million our state has already spent. New Jersey taxpayers are now the owners of a brand-new, $600 million Hole to Nowhere."

State Assemblyman Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden) said Christie's decision "has destroyed job creation in New Jersey in so many ways that it's difficult to measure. . . . What type of leader folds such an important project without any real effort to solve the problems facing it?"

Christie said he decided to cancel the "Access to the Region's Core" tunnel based on financial estimates from a committee of officials from NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The current $8.7 billion price tag was to be met with $3 billion from the Federal Transit Administration, $3 billion from the Port Authority, and $2.7 billion from New Jersey and from other federal sources.

Money for projected cost overruns would have had to come from New Jersey, Christie said.