The Gateway Program Development Corporation is tasked with building a new tunnel to Penn Station, rehabilitating the one that’s there and building a new bridge across the Hackensack River. | AP Photo Gateway chairman resolutely optimistic in face of dire signs from D.C.

With President Donald Trump apparently dead set on denying federal funding for a vital new rail tunnel linking New Jersey with New York’s Penn Station, one tunnel booster is drawing sustenance from an unusual source: his experience in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in New York state.

“I was asked at that time ... ‘Well, how is it going to get done?’” Steve Cohen, who was then Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s second-in-command, said Friday, referring to the ultimately successful 2011 effort. “And I said, 'I’m not sure. I just know it’s going to get done.‘”


It did, thanks in part to the Cuomo administration’s unexpected ability to win the backing of wealthy Republican donors, paired with the changing zeitgeist.

Cohen now chairs the Gateway Program Development Corporation, the multi-agency group tasked with building a new tunnel to Penn Station, rehabilitating the one that’s there and building a new bridge across the Hackensack River. The existing tunnel and Portal Bridge are both 107 years old and falling apart. On Friday morning, in fact, a bridge malfunction snarled Amtrak and NJ Transit service for several hours.

"This morning is an example of what happens to commuters and the economy when the federal government is missing in action," New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement.

The Gateway corporation had been banking on the federal government splitting the cost of the $13 billion tunnel project and $1.5 billion bridge.

The two structures represent an acute threat to the health of the New York-area economy — and by extension, the nation’s. More parochially, they threaten the property values of local real estate interests like the Trump Organization and Kushner Companies.

But the president seems disinclined to honor a prior federal agreement to split the cost of the tunnel and bridge with New York and New Jersey.

He has instead threatened to veto the omnibus spending bill due March 23, should it include funding for the Gateway project. Rep. Pete King, the Republican congressman from Long Island who’s come to champion the project, recently suggested Trump is fixated on the issue.

According to King, House Speaker Paul Ryan recently told fellow Republicans that Gateway is “the only issue that [Trump's] really talking about."

King, in turn, has vowed to vote against the spending bill should it not include tunnel funding. He’s working to line up other Republican members of Congress on the issue, and on Thursday pulled Trump aside at a St. Patrick's Day luncheon to deliver his spiel.

“I was able to sort of get us alone off to the side for a five-minute conversation," King said Friday. "I told him how important it is to us, both economically and politically, and told him that I had never voted against an omnibus bill before, but I would in this case. I would have to.

"One thing I do know, he will be the one making the final decision. ... If he wants it, it's going to go in," King said.

Events like that are giving Cohen confidence, even as other stakeholders despair.

“It will get done,” Cohen said. “And you see — Representative King was a great example of that — of how things will begin to fall into place, so that this will happen.”

On Friday morning, in another incident that's likely to fuel Cohen's optimism, Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, Trump’s closet ally in the New Jersey delegation, sent out a statement arguing that Gateway is in fact worthy of federal funding, contrary to the Trump administration's argument that it is strictly of local concern.

“This morning’s Portal Bridge malfunction in New Jersey is further proof that leaders across all levels of government must come together and get the Gateway tunnel project done,” MacArthur said. “This project is of critical importance to our nation's economy and would create thousands of jobs for the highly skilled men and women in the building and construction trades. Completing the Gateway tunnel project would be a major win for our entire nation and I will continue to work across the aisle to help make it happen."