Feds Deny Any Gateway Agreement.

As of this moment, I have not yet seen confirmation in—dare I use the term?—in the mainstream media, but the New York edition of Crain’s, the business publication, has reported that the Trump Administration is withdrawing the federal government’s support of the Gateway Project. It appears to be their position that there never was an agreement specifying that half of the funding for the project would come from the feds.
 
The story certainly appears valid. Crain’s is a legitimate, respected business publication and they quote by name the deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.
 

 This news, if true, would kill—at least for the present—what is arguably the single most important infrastructure project in the country: a new tunnel under the Hudson River to connect New York City with New Jersey; repairs to the original dual tunnels (now well over 100 years old and badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012); and the rebuilding of the infamously balky Portal Bridge in New Jersey.
 
Many hundreds of trains a day pass through and over this infrastructure, which links Manhattan with New Jersey and the entire lower portion of the Northeast Corridor to Washington, DC. Hundreds of thousands of people on commuter trains pass through those tunnels on the way to work in New York City from New Jersey every day. And so do numerous Amtrak trains from New York to the entire eastern seaboard and to all of the southern states.
 
I’m not going to bother looking it up—frankly, I’m just too damn pissed— but I recall one estimate that the closing of those tunnels for whatever reason would cost the regional economy a billion dollars a day.
 
Remember all that campaign Trump-eting about a trillion dollar plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure? How it was all part of the Grand Plan to “make American great again”?
 
Just smoke and mirrors, folks. Just more bullshit from the President of the United States.