President-elect Donald Trump faces major obstacles in making the Gateway tunnel project a reality. The Gateway Development Corp. proposed more than a year ago is still many months away from becoming a legal entity. Management of this project on an interim basis by a simple memorandum of understanding between New York, New Jersey, the U.S. Department of Transportation and New Jersey Transit may go on into 2017.

It is still unknown how the proposed $24 billion Hudson River tunnel (connecting New Jersey with Penn Station) and other infrastructure work will be financed. Moody's Investor Services has questioned the ability of New Jersey to come up with its $6 billion share of the project cost. Others question how New York can find $6 billion for its contribution.

Interesting to note, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not a party to this memorandum, even though its Metro-North arm is looking at Gateway and other ways to add service for Rockland and Orange County residents into New York City.

Earlier this year, Amtrak and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey found $70 million to begin preliminary engineering, but this was a drop in the bucket. Preliminary engineering followed by completion of final design and engineering can be 5% to 10% of total project cost. For Gateway, that could be $1.4 billion to $2.8 billion.

Another $55 million was found to replace the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River, but that was just a down payment toward the full $1.34 billion cost. For federal officials to deliver on promises to "commit resources and accelerate environmental reviews" will be difficult. New Jersey Transit staff and consultants will continue to be in the process of preparing detailed documents in conformance with the National Environmental Protect Act for another one to two years. At a minimum, a full blown environmental impact statement will be required, which for smaller federal projects has taken several years. So many transit agencies ask to expedite the environmental-review process for their respective projects that "fast tracking" is rapidly becoming a cliche in the transit industry.

Sen. Charles Schumer earlier this year suggested that actual construction can begin by 2018, but he has since backtracked to 2019. Even this new date is unrealistic. The environmental reviews would have to be completed and a finding issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Then the project would need to complete design and engineering work, obtain a full funding grant agreement, secure the full $24 billion and complete the procurement process for construction contractors. Real estate issues including obtainment of easements, relocation of businesses or acquisition of property also must be resolved. This will require far more time than the senator suggests, if past history for such projects as the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal, and the ill-fated Access to the Region's Core is any indication.

Gateway could be sped up and its costs reduced if some Buy America program requirements were waived, but will the U.S. Department of Transportation do so? The number of such waivers issued to transit agencies in recent years can be counted on one hand.

The agency, Sen. Cory Booker and Schumer ($12 billion), Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie all have failed to identify or secure specific sources for their financial contributions to the project. There are no significant dollars programmed in the new Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) for Gateway either. This legislation makes rail and mass transit eligible for federal New Starts funding.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox has said up to $4 billion in New Starts funding might become available to Gateway. This would still leave a shortfall of $8 billion in federal and $20 billion toward the overall project costs. There is no guarantee that these funds will actually be authorized and appropriated by future sessions of Congress and signed into law by future presidents. The project would have to complete a competitive New Starts process, which takes several years.

There are dozens of other potential New Starts projects being championed by many of the other 98 Senators and 435 House members. The requests far exceed any available current or future New Starts funding. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New Jersey Transit, Port Authority, city Department of Transportation and others from the New York region all have their own projects competing against each other and the Gateway Tunnel for billions in New Starts funding. And how much could Gateway get? The largest such grant was $2.6 billion for East Side Access, and Federal Railroad Administration loans have never exceeded $1 billion.

Amtrak secured language in the FAST Act affording it the ability to use some of the $200 million to $400 million in its operating surplus from the Northeast Corridor toward the new Hudson River Tunnel, but this needs future approval by Congress. Schumer believes that Amtrak will contribute 10% toward the $24 billion total project cost. But even if Amtrak programmed $200 million yearly toward the Gateway Tunnel, it would take 24 years to come up with $2.4 billion for Gateway. Any assumptions that it would never take that long should consider the history of other massive transportation projects.

Larry Penner is a transportation historian and advocate who worked for 31 years at the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Region 2 New York office.