(The following article by Tom Feeney was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on December 14.)
NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit hired a construction manager yesterday to oversee work on the $7.2 billion trans-Hudson Tunnel.
The tunnel, the biggest public works project in New Jersey in decades, will provide two single-track rail tubes beneath the Hudson River. It will connect New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan and increase NJ Transit’s capacity for moving riders back and forth.
The agency, which hopes to begin construction in 2009, will pay up to $5 million to the CM Consortium, a joint venture of Tishman Corp., Parsons Corp. and ARUP to perform the construction management services.
The agency hired a firm to do preliminary engineering work for the project in August.
“It’s essential that we bring the construction manager in at this time,” said NJ Transit executive director George Warrington. “In the end, this will save us more money than it will cost.”
The primary job of the construction manager at this early stage of the project will be to make sure that the plans the engineers draw up are practical to build, Warrington said.
The tunnel is part of a larger project that NJ Transit has dubbed “Access to the Region’s Core.” Other work includes a new rail station under 34th Street in Manhattan and signal and track improvements along the Northeast Corridor line. The new rail station, which is adjacent to New York Penn Station, will connect to the New York City subway and PATH trains.
The companies involved in the consortium have worked on other large rail and tunnel projects, including the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in Great Britain, New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 and the Con Edison First Avenue Tunnel and Steam Mains in New York.
David Peter Alan, chairman of the Lackawanna Coalition, a rail advocacy group that opposes the new tunnel, told the board it ought to wait before hiring a construction manager. Gov. Eliot Spitzer just took office in New York, and his administration should have more time to consider the project, Alan said.
“Please wait until New York’s new leaders have had a full and fair opportunity to review it,” he said.