John Seasly

Staff Writer, @jseasly

The Gateway Project – a massive rail improvement project for New York and New Jersey expected to cost billions – took major steps forward Thursday with the appointment of a four-member board of trustees who then voted to apply for $6 billion in low-interest federal loans.

The project, estimated to cost $24 billion by the U.S. Department of Transportation, will double rail connections between Newark and New York, increasing capacity from 24 to 48 trains per hour at peak times. This involves adding a second two-track tunnel underneath the Hudson River and improvements to the existing tunnel. It will also replace the two-track Portal North Bridge over the Hackensack River and add a second two-track bridge, Portal South, nearby.

Gateway is still very much in its earliest planning phases, but took an important step Thursday with the appointment of officers to the Gateway Program Development Corporation, which will oversee the project. Four trustees were appointed, one each nominated by NJ Transit, Amtrak, the New York State Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The board chair position will rotate between the NJ Transit and New York State Department of Transportation trustees, with Amtrak’s trustee holding the vice chair position, according to the board’s by-laws. Voting must be unanimous for decisions to be approved, the board agreed.

NJ Transit’s trustee, who was elected to serve as board chair, is Richard Bagger. Bagger, who also serves on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s board of commissioners, was Gov. Chris Christie’s chief of staff for two years and is an executive vice president at the biopharmaceutical company Celgene Corp.

Amtrak’s trustee Anthony Coscia serves in the vice chair position. Coscia is Amtrak’s board chairman and previously served as board chairman of the Port Authority. Board treasurer is New York State Department of Transportation trustee Steven Cohen, a former aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a former vice chair of the Port Authority.

The U.S. Department of Transportation trustee is Andrew Right, executive director of the department’s Build America Bureau and a counselor to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Diana Lopez, a senior adviser to Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye, is serving as secretary and general counsel.

Besides its own organization, the board’s only item of business Thursday was the decision to enter into a funding agreement with the federal government to proceed with the first phase of the project. The board approved unanimously of entering into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Emerging Projects Program, which will allow the project to apply for roughly $6 billion in long-term, low-interest federal loans.

These loans, if approved, will help pay for two new rail tubes under the Hudson River that will connect to Penn Station, rehab of the existing tubes and the replacement of the Portal Bridge. It will also fund construction of a concrete casing along the west side of Manhattan needed for the project.

The trustees voted 3-0 in favor of the agreement, with Right recusing himself from the vote.

“This is really the first step in accessing billions of dollars of low-cost federal loans,” Right said. He added that the Gateway project was the first in the country to apply for this type of funding.

No further action was taken and no meetings have yet been scheduled for the board. Bagger said that a schedule would be forthcoming in the next few weeks.