Murphy says ‘the biggest policy mistake of the past 50 years in New Jersey’ was Christie’s decision to cancel Gateway tunnel project

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) blasted predecessor Chris Christie (R) for halting the Gateway tunnel project between New York and New Jersey.

Murphy told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday that “the biggest policy mistake of the past 50 years in New Jersey” was Christie’s decision to cancel the construction of a new tunnel between New York City and New Jersey in 2010. Murphy said that if the construction was not halted, the new tunnels would have been completed five years ago.

“The tunnels that exist were built in 1910,” Murphy said. “They’ve been damaged severely over the years. This is two new rail tunnels under the Hudson River. It’s a game changer for New Jersey commuters but tragically the — the project that was cancelled by my predecessor would have been opened five years ago. So, we’re going to get it but it’s sadly later than it should have been.”

Murphy also noted that the construction of the tunnel costs more now than it did when Christie was in office. At the time, Christie’s administration said it cancelled the Access to the Region’s Core project, which would have built two new tunnels, due to rising costs to the state.

“Oh, it definitely costs more money,” Murphy said. “But we have no choice. This is 20 percent of the American economy rides in these rails, and thousands of commuters from New Jersey go into New York every day. We have no choice.”

The Biden administration announced last week that it advanced the Gateway Hudson River Tunnel project to the next step in the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grants program. The next phase is the next part necessary to unlocking the nearly $7 billion in funding for this project to construct a new tunnel under the Hudson River to serve commuters between New Jersey and New York.

“For a long time now, the Gateway project has been my passion. It’s a labor of love. And after many false starts and obstacles placed in our way, Gateway is full speed ahead with $6.88 billion ready to go and be used for critical work and construction,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) said in a statement last week. “Gateway’s future is assured and the most important public works project in America is all systems go.”

A spokesperson for Chris Christie told The Hill, “Given that state spending has exploded by more than 57% under Governor Murphy, it’s no surprise to hear he doesn’t care about protecting New Jersey taxpayers.”

The spokesperson pointed to a taped interview Christie did with Larry Kudlow at WABC in 2015, in which the former governor said, “The reason I killed the ARC tunnel was the federal government was contributing to it, the state of New Jersey was contributing to it and the state or city of New York was contributing nothing. And New Jersey was going to be responsible for every nickel of cost overruns, which at that time was estimated to be three to five billion dollars.” 

Christie continued, “Quite frankly, I said to Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg and Governor [David] Paterson at the time, I said, ‘Listen, guys, if you want this tunnel as badly as I do, then pony up some money.’ But they got a great deal from Jon Corzine, who negotiated—that master negotiator—you know, he said New Jersey will take on all the burden. Well, I am not going to put that on the tax payers of New Jersey, nor should anybody expect us to, because New York benefits from this as well.”

According to the Biden administration, the tunnel carries 200,000 passenger trips per day on the New Jersey Transit lines as well as Amtrak.

Updated at 8:25 pm.