Report Disputes Christies Basis for Halting Tunnel

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Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey exaggerated when he declared that unforeseen costs to the state were forcing him to cancel the new train tunnel planned to relieve congested routes across the Hudson River, according to a long-awaited report by independent Congressional investigators.

By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: April 10, 2012

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Mel Evans/Associated Press

Gov. Chris Christie said he canceled a project because of cost concerns.

Related

• M.T.A. Chief Rules Out Subway Line to New Jersey (April 4, 2012)

• Christie Halts Train Tunnel, Citing Its Cost (October 8, 2010)

• Times Topic: Trans-Hudson Passenger Rail Tunnel (ARC)

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

In North Bergen, N.J., the entrance to the Hudson River rail tunnel that was being built.

The report by the Government Accountability Office , to be released this week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.

Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey's share of the costs: he said the state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had made several offers to share those costs.

Canceling the tunnel, then the largest public works project in the nation, helped shape Mr. Christie's profile as a rising Republican star, an enforcer of fiscal discipline in a country drunk on debt. But the report is likely to revive criticism that his decision, which he said was about "hard choices" in tough economic times, was more about avoiding the need to raise the state's gasoline tax, which would have violated a campaign promise. The governor subsequently steered $4 billion earmarked for the tunnel to the state's near-bankrupt transportation trust fund, traditionally financed by the gasoline tax.

A spokesman for the governor, Michael Drewniak, said Mr. Christie's statement of costs had included $775 million to build a new portal bridge, which was required as part of the project. The 70 percent, he said, included the costs that would have been paid for by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is run by both states, as well as federal highway and stimulus funds earmarked for New Jersey. Counting those costs, which the report does not do, would put the state's share at 65.5 percent.

As for the state's share of the overruns, Mr. Drewniak said the federal government "offered no significant increase in outright funding that would significantly mitigate the costs to New Jersey."

"The bottom line is that the G.A.O. report simply bears out what we said in the fall of 2010 and say to this day: the ARC project was a very, very bad deal for New Jersey," he added, using the acronym for the project, known as Access to the Region's Core.

Martin E. Robins, the founding director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University and an early director of the ARC project, criticized the governor. "In hindsight, it's apparent that he had a highly important political objective: to cannibalize the project so he could find an alternate way of keeping the transportation trust fund program moving, and he went ahead and did it," he said.

Shutting down the tunnel project extinguished the best hope to relieve the increasing congestion not only between New Jersey and Manhattan, but also along the popular high-speed route between Boston and Washington. Now, Amtrak and New Jersey trains share two 100-year-old single-track tunnels under the Hudson. As the report notes, those tracks now operate at capacity, and demand for mass transit between New Jersey and Manhattan is expected to grow 38 percent by 2030.

One 15-minute disruption, the report said, ripples out to affect 15 other Amtrak and New Jersey trains. Last month, problems on the two tracks on two consecutive days sent delays rippling out along the Northeast.

The governor said when he canceled the project that he hoped New York City or federal officials would find another solution But last week, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said one of those, a proposed extension of the No. 7 subway line to New Jersey, was not going to happen "in anybody's lifetime." Congress gave Amtrak $15 million to study a tunnel that would expand capacity by about half as much as the ARC project, but the money to build the tunnel is uncertain.

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