How to move tons of dirt from Gateway rail tunnel boring? A town pushes rail over trucks

NORTH BERGEN — Township officials and leaders of the Gateway rail tunnel project are zipping letters back and forth over concerns about the barrage of trucks that will be using the streets around Tonnelle Avenue, where much of the tunnel construction work will be centered.

“We would like to follow up to continue the discussions around our concerns regarding the severe increase in truck traffic … that will result once construction commences,” North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco wrote in a recent letter to Kris Kolluri, president and CEO of the Gateway Development Commission.

The commission is the bistate agency overseeing construction of the $16 billion tunnel project, which includes building a new two-track tube under the Hudson River that will connect to New York Penn Station, and then rehabilitating the old two-track tunnel that has been in use since 1910 and was seriously damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

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At the crux of the back-and-forth is whether to use freight rail to reduce the number of trucks needed to haul spoils — the muck removed during construction of the new tunnel — and to bring in rebar, precast concrete segments, Portland cement and other materials to the site.

The commission expects most of the truck traffic to occur over two years with 15 to 26 trucks per hour visiting and leaving the project site, located at the notoriously congested Tonnelle Avenue and Routes 1 and 9.

By comparison, one rail car can hold four to five truckloads of silt material. And while a tractor-trailer can haul only two concrete segments at a time, one rail car can hold up to six.

“It’s disappointing that the Gateway Development Commission appears to not be seriously considering the option of utilizing freight rail service to transport construction materials involved in the project as opposed to putting hundreds of heavy trucks per week on our local roads,” Sacco said in a recent statement.

The North Bergen mayor would instead like to see a local, minority- and women-owned transload business given stronger consideration.

How to reduce truck traffic

Kolluri responded to Sacco’s letter earlier this month with assurances about how the agency is planning to reduce truck impacts and traffic, including restricting their use to weekdays between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., installing sound-reducing windows and ventilation for hundreds of residential properties above the project site, and constructing a traffic signal at the construction site.

Finding ways to reduce truck traffic at construction sites is something other agencies in the region are starting to consider.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey hired a contractor to build and operate a support facility at the JFK Airport construction site where barges are being used to eliminate 300,000 trucks from the congested highways that serve the airport, where the bistate agency is undergoing a four-year, $19 billion redevelopment program.

Most of the Gateway Development Commission's planning so far has focused on the use trucks over rail — and the driving reason for that is laid out in several sentences of the final environmental report the agency sent to the federal government.

It said the commission would consider using rail freight rights-of way, but "this is unlikely because the additional handling involved to use this method" could lead to delays and additional costs.

Kolluri pointed to that in his response letter to Sacco, adding, “Should feasible alternatives arise, however, we are committed to evaluating them thoroughly and implementing them through a fair and competitive process in coordination with the relevant contractor.”

Coming up with a rail solution

That 2021 environmental report fails to account for what has taken place in the three years since it was written, said Stephen Guido, CEO of Strategic Rail Solutions, a North Bergen-based transload company.

“We came up with an alternative plan that we felt was very feasible and very environmentally friendly when it comes to environmental justice, reducing the carbon footprint and taking a portion of the trucks off the congested highways,” Guido said.

In 2019, Guido and his wife, Maria Elisa Guido, co-founders of SRS, began getting the pieces in place to come up with a freight railroad solution that could, in large part, support the Gateway projects. As the tunnel program has inched its way to a green light – it is still awaiting a full funding grant agreement with the Federal Transit Administration that is expected to be approved in the coming weeks – Guido has transformed an overgrown federal property on 83rd Street in North Bergen.

SRS and its investors have built a $10 million facility on a site wedged between seven railroad tracks serving Conrail, CSX and NYSW, which connects at a nearby yard with Norfolk Southern. In lieu of local property taxes that are not owed because the company sits on federal property, SRS struck a usage fee agreement in 2022 with the township. For every ton of material that goes through the facility, 50 cents goes to North Bergen.

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Currently, much of the SRS business involves carting away millings, or grinded up asphalt from road projects, and bringing in sand or stone used by utility companies, like PSE&G or Consolidated Edison.

Guido also took over a landfill property in Syracuse, New York, accessible by rail from his North Bergen facility, which creates an “end market” for certain materials. That, he said, is “the secret sauce” to his proposal for Gateway and other future projects because it helps bring down the cost by minimizing having to ship the materials to multiple sites around the country.

No rail spur to project site

One of the biggest challenges is that there is not currently a track connection to the project site.

Guido spent $350,000 to design and engineer a 1,500-foot, two-track rail spur and switch at the main Gateway project site in North Bergen where 32 rail cars could be switched out every 12 hours after being filled with spoils from tunneling. He also said he got approval to connect those tracks with Conrail tracks serviced by CSX and Norfolk Southern that abut the project site.

Guido estimates he could construct that rail spur for about $5 million. Hundreds of rail cars would also have to be purchased.

Using Guido’s rail plan does not completely eliminate the need for trucks on the various Gateway projects. There are instances where material from construction locations other than Tonnelle Avenue, like a ventilation shaft area near Hoboken, would require trucks to bring material to Guido’s North Bergen facility.

Trucks could also be needed for material that can’t be shipped to Syracuse if they are contaminated or are in a category that his Syracuse facility is not permitted to handle.

The end goal is for the Gateway Development Commission and its partners "to recognize the value of reducing the carbon footprint and taking environmental justice into consideration by moving materials outbound by rail and inbound by rail," Guido said.

"We’re taking tens of thousands of trucks off of Route 3 and the New Jersey Turnpike," he added. "There will always be trucks involved, but we can reduce the congestion on 1 and 9 by using the rail."

Time is of the essence

After facing numerous political hurdles over the years, the Gateway program is finally accelerating — and quickly.

The tunnel program is broken up into nine projects and contracts; three moved to the construction phase in the last year. The Palisades and Manhattan parts of the new tunnel construction are the next two phases — and are of particular significance to Guido.

The Gateway Development Commission is accepting bids from five pre-qualified contractor groups for the Palisades project next month, which involves tunneling through the Palisades from North Bergen to Hoboken and building a ventilation shaft in Hoboken. The Manhattan tunnel entrance project will be awarded later this year.

Guido said he has met with Kolluri and his team multiple times to discuss their ideas of incorporating rail. The commission's team has directed them to work with the pre-qualified contractors preparing bids and connected SRS with NJ Transit because the company would need a lease or easement agreement to build the two-track spur on the agency’s property at the construction site.

“Should the contractor, as a means and methods, propose an alternative and that alternative keeps the project at cost — meaning on budget and on schedule — of course we’ll consider it,” Kolluri said in an interview. “We also have to answer what rail noise is going to do for communities in the region."

"So, there’s a social justice issue, there’s a where are the tunnel spoils going, what is the cost structure, what do the permits look like and what modifications do you have to do" to the environmental impact statement, he said.

Kolluri said all of these questions and issues should be handled between prospective subcontractors, like SRS, and the short-listed contractors that are drafting bids and identifying how they will handle various elements of the construction work, like loading and disposing of tunnel spoils.

“We have short-listed five firms and my understanding is that SRS is having conversations with them," Kolluri said. "Good, that’s where it belongs, in the middle of a procurement, we will not be making value judgments on which contractors' means and methods is the better way to handle tunnel spoils. That’s what the procurement process is for and we’re going to respect the procurement process.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: How to move tons of dirt from Gateway rail tunnel boring