Why America Is Digging a New Tunnel Under the Hudson

#HudsonTunnel #Megaworks #Engineering Every Amtrak and NJ Transit train between New Jersey and Manhattan squeezes through one two-track tunnel dug in 1910, and Hurricane Sandy filled it with seawater in 2012. Now 1,680-ton tunnel boring machines are cutting the first new rail tunnel under the Hudson River in more than a century. How was the old tunnel built, why is salt still destroying it, and how do you dig a new one under a cliff and a river without stopping the trains? Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:39 One tunnel, two tracks 1:46 Dug by hand in 1904 3:06 The night the sea got in 4:01 The 16 billion dollar plan 4:57 The 1,680-ton machines 6:19 Through the cliff 7:11 Under the river 8:05 What it changes Sources: Gateway Development Commission (gatewayprogram.org), NY Governor's Office (28 Sep 2026), NJBIZ (19 Oct 2026), Railway Supply (11 Oct 2026), World Construction Network (9 Oct 2026), AP via NBC New York (29 Sep 2026), Construction Dive, ENR, USDOT Build America Bureau, Wikipedia (North River Tunnels). Dates for opening are targets. Footage and photos are free-licensed (CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC0 / public domain) from Wikimedia Commons and credited on screen. Tunnel-boring-machine clips from Ho Chi Minh City, Manila and Hallandsås are illustrative, not the Hudson machines. Historic 1904-1910 photos are public domain and tinted. Diagrams are original Megaworks animations (schematic, not to scale). Thumbnail art is an AI-generated illustration. Music: "Under the River", original Megaworks synthesis. Narration: synthetic voice (Chatterbox-Turbo TTS). Megaworks (also searched as mega works and Mega Works) explains how the biggest machines and megaprojects on Earth get built. Subscribe for more. #HudsonTunnel #Megaworks #Engineering #MegaWorks #GatewayProject #NewYork #NewJersey #Amtrak #TunnelBoringMachine #Megaprojects #Infrastructure #Trains