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Nothing boring about this: Big honking digging machines get built in New Jersey
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Apr 13, 2026
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Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Apr 13, 2026
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Crews in New Jersey are assembling a pair of custom-built machines that will dig out the first new set of Hudson River train tunnels in more than a century.
Officials behind the $16 billion project, the centerpiece for the larger Gateway Program, showed off the high tech boring machines on Monday. Each one is made up of nearly a hundred pieces and when put together, will make up a 500-foot, 1,700-ton digging behemoth.
The machines highlight how far tunneling technology has come since the early 20th century, when workers for the Pennsylvania Railroad dug a set of Hudson River tunnels by hand in pressurized chambers that sickened many with the bends.
Their assembly also marks a major step forward for the mega-project after President Donald Trump tried and failed to halt its federal funding as part of a fight with Democrats in Congress.
Gateway officials said the boring machine will be able to carve out 30 feet of tunnel per day.
Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
The machines, designed in Germany by the company Herrenknecht, cost $25 million a piece, and can’t be reused. They will require a crew of about 30 people to operate, according to Gateway officials. The machines will dig through extremely hard basalt rocks, remove the rocks along a conveyor belt, and set a concrete tunnel lining as it moves along.
Digging is expected to begin in the next couple of months, although the engineers weren't sure of the exact date.
The tunnel boring will begin on the New Jersey side under the Palisades, about 80 feet beneath the surface. It will go all the way through to Weehawken, where it will be 290 feet underground so as not to disturb the homes there. That’s expected to take about a year of digging at a rate of 30 feet a day, with maintenance to the machine done on weekends.
Days after NASA brought astronauts back from the moon for the first time in since the 1970s, Gateway officials unviled the machine that will dig out the first new Hudson River train tunnel since 1910.
Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
Crews plan to swap out the machines for difference ones when the dig reaches the Hudson River. A new set of diggers, which haven't yet been ordered, is required to handle the muck under the riverbed.
But before that process kicks off, crews are working to put the whole thing together in North Bergen.
"It's bolting and it's welding and it's putting an Erector set together essentially,” James Starace, chief of program delivery for the Gateway Development Commission said on a tour of the work site. “All of these parts go in a particular order at a particular time.”
But unlike a Lego or Erector set that just clips together, the pieces on the front of the drill that will blast through the rock require high tech-welding.
Workers were busy on Monday sticking postage stamp-size pink pads along the machines, which will heat up and are used to weld the 59 discs called “cutter wheels” to the front. Those will break down the hard abrasive rocks. The discs can be swapped out and are expected to wear down frequently.
“Imagine with the force that it comes in, you don't want the your cutter to fall apart, so under the manufacturer's recommendation and supervision, you have to do special welding,” said Hamed Nejad, the chief engineer of the Gateway Development Commission.
Gateway officials estimate the new tunnel will be finished in 2035, about nine years from now. The previous set of Hudson River train tunnels, which opened in 1910, took just six years to build.
Tagged
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new york city
transportation
Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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