The Gateway Development Commission announced Oct. 8 that the tunnel boring machine has begun drilling into the Palisades Cliffs with a second drill set to deploy in the coming weeks.
The TBMs, which have begun on schedule, will drill around 30 feet of tunnel per day.
Once the TBMs reach that milestone, the work calls for the drills’ removal from the tunnel. Then, crews will deploy new machines designed for the mixed ground conditions under the Hudson River.
“When the first tunnel boring machine’s cutterhead bit into the rock face in the launch box, GDC reached the most significant Hudson Tunnel Project delivery milestone to date on schedule,” said GDC Chief Executive Officer Tom Prendergast.
Tunnel boring has started! After years of preparation, our first tunnel boring machine is getting to work, carving through the Palisades to build the first mile of the new rail tunnel’s northern tube. A second machine will start building the southern tunnel tube soon. https://t.co/h5Brax5Zfu
— Gateway Program News (@GatewayProgNews) October 8, 2026
Extraordinary machine
Prendergast called this a major achievement that would not have been possible without the people who worked on making this “incredible machine.”
These TBM machines feature a design meant to tunnel through hard, dry rock. They use a 28-foot, 8-inch-diameter cutterhead and trailing gantries that extend about 500 feet and weigh more than 1,680 tons.
As the drills excavate and build the tunnel, buckets will collect the rocks as they break apart and put them onto a conveyor. The belt will then carry the debris to the back of the tunnel for disposal.
At the same time, an erector arm places precast concrete segments to form the permanent tunnel lining. Meanwhile, hydraulic thrust jacks brace against the completed lining to push the machine forward.
In a joint statement released by the GDC, the group said that “before our tunnel boring machine started digging, it had been nearly 120 years since the last train tunnel under the Hudson River was excavated. We are far overdue for an upgrade, and the hundreds of thousands of riders who deal with the fallout from train delays know it.”
This project will drill roughly 5,100 feet from the tunnel portal in North Bergen to the Hudson County Access Shaft on the border of Weehawken and Hoboken in about a year.
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