Lack of plan risks big delay for Gateway

Amtrak needs to get its act together to make sure the $30 billion Gateway Program stays on track, the railroad’s inspector general warned in a report published Tuesday.

Amtrak has no comprehensive plan to coordinate the program’s variety of projects, which include construction of two new Hudson River train tunnels — and there’s no master schedule to everything done by the railroad’s purported goal of 2035, the report said.

That could spell trouble for Amtrak, as well as for the hundreds of thousands of commuters who rely on the infrastructure the railroad seeks to improve.

If the old tunnels fail before the new ones are operational, it would cost the New York region’s economy $22 billion, said a 2019 report from the Regional Plan Association.

Amtrak’s inspector general warns in the report that the railroad is running behind on establishing a process to coordinate the different agencies working on the project, which puts the Gateway program at risk of running far behind schedule.

Gateway planners hope the project is complete by 2035.

“Gateway involves multiple transportation organizations — which may have competing priorities — that depend on multiple funding sources for numerous projects and have evolving delivery time lines,” the report states. “These practical and political complexities increase the risk to the company’s budget and time frames to meet its commitments to the program.”

The complex project requires coordination between Amtrak, NJ Transit, the Port Authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Gateway Development Commission, a bistate agency established to apply for federal money for the project.

Amtrak currently does not have enough people in place to oversee the work, the inspector general found. The report highlights that Gateway’s lead engineer resigned in April 2021, which required the work left behind to be split among five other engineers.

The railroad’s push to hire new construction managers is also hindered by a shortage of human resource employees, the inspector general pointed out in a separate report last year.

The inspector general report acknowledges Amtrak has made some progress in catching up on a comprehensive plan for Gateway — but there’s still no guarantee the work will be done on time.