President Biden is set to visit a Baltimore tunnel to announce how the infrastructure law will help to eliminate Amtrak's biggest chokepoint between Washington and New Jersey.
The Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel is turning 150 this year and is still serving passengers. Trains crawl at 30 mph through its curves under West Baltimore, creating delays up and down the busy Washington-to-New York route.President Biden visited the decrepit structure Monday to announce how the $1 trillion infrastructure law will help to replace the Reconstruction-era tunnel — the oldest in the Northeast — and eliminate the railroad’s biggest chokepoint between Washington and New Jersey.
Biden’s visit marks an important milestone for getting the project to construction and comes as the administration is beginning to distribute billions of federal dollars to upgrade aging infrastructure. Biden, who rode Amtrak for more than three decades while in Congress, has been a longtime supporter of investment in passenger rail while advocating for modernizing the Northeast Corridor.
“It’s hard to overstate what a big deal this is for Maryland,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen said in a statement. “Replacing this tunnel with the new Frederick Douglass Tunnel will not only improve rail service for travelers and commuters it will also drive more growth and opportunity to our state by slashing the travel time from D.C. to Baltimore to just 30 minutes and expanding business at the Port.”
Although no specific funding allocations have yet been announced, the Department of Transportation late last year identified the Baltimore project among more than a dozen century-old bridges and tunnels in the Northeast set to receive $9 billion through a grant program — one of several funding sources.The tunnel project already received $44 million in federal funding for preliminary engineering and permitting, and Maryland has committed to contributing $450 million.
On Tuesday, Biden will travel to New York to highlight investment in a Hudson River rail tunnel. Infrastructure money is expected to help fund a new tunnel and rehabilitate an existing tunnel that carries more than 400 trains daily between New Jersey and New York. The structure has been in use for more than 110 years and suffered saltwater damage in 2012 from Superstorm Sandy.
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