- The North River Tunnel, which connects New Jersey and New York City, is falling into disrepair.
- President Donald Trump's Administration has said it will not provide funding for a project that would repair the bridge.
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One of the America's most important pieces of infrastructure is decaying — and Trump is threatening its future
The North River Tunnel connects New York and New Jersey, and may have less than 20 years before its unusable.
President Donald Trump spent over a year promising to modernize America's infrastructure.
The personal and economic consequences of continuing to neglect the North River Tunnel could be devastating. Around 13% of the people who work in Manhattan live in New Jersey, which corresponds to about $33 billion in income. To properly fix the tunnel, each of its two tubes (each tube carries one train) would need to be closed for 18 months for repairs, which would cut the tunnel's capacity by 75%, according to Bloomberg.
The tunnel's importance extends beyond New Jersey and New York. It makes up part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, the busiest passenger rail line in the US, which extends from Boston to Washington, DC. About a quarter of the 820,000 daily passengers on the Northeast Corridor travel through the North River Tunnel, and given that the Northeast contributes $3 trillion to the US economy each year, the tunnel plays a pivotal role on a national scale. If it falls into disrepair without a working alternative, the consequences could be dire.
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But the North River Tunnel isn't the only rail line used by New York commuters that's nearing a crisis. A New York Times report from November found that NYC's subway system has become less reliable than any other major metropolitan rapid transit system due to decades of insufficient maintenance and financial mismanagement. A follow-up report in December described how the city's subway construction projects tend to be far more expensive than in comparable cities throughout the world due to routine overstaffing and overly generous compensation negotiated by unions and contractors without input from any city agencies.
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