Sen. Charles Schumer on Tuesday took a shot at Chris Christie for obstructing efforts to build new rail tunnels under the Hudson River — drawing return fire from the outspoken New Jersey governor and presidential hopeful.
“There is a special burden on Governor Christie to lobby his party in Congress to move in our direction on infrastructure funding: for one, he canceled ARC [Access to the Region’s Core], our first effort at fixing the tunnels. And second, the vast majority of riders, 80 percent, who would be impacted by tunnel closures are New Jersey residents who come into the city via NJ Transit,” said Schumer.
“Some people in his party are still trying to bleed infrastructure dry.”
Christie’s office fired back that Schumer was out of touch with reality.
“It’s easy for Senator Schumer to make these claims when New York wasn’t contributing a dime to the ARC project and didn’t step up to take on any of the cost of the project’s overruns,” said Nicole Sizemore, Christie’s deputy press secretary.
Schumer wants to speed up construction of the tunnels and open up more federal funding sources by forming the Gateway Development Authority with New York, New Jersey, Amtrak and the Port Authority before the existing 100-year-old tunnels deteriorate further.