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New Jersey Transit recently received Federal Transit Administration (FTA) approval to release the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), bringing the agency a step closer to securing project funding for the Trans-Hudson Express (THE) Tunnel.

NJ Transit now will schedule public hearings on the project. After the hearings are held, the agency will prepare the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS); if FTA approves the FEIS, it’d clear the way for federal funding and enable construction to start in 2009, according to an NJ Transit release.

The THE Tunnel project includes two single-track tunnels running beneath the New Jersey Palisades and Hudson River to a new station beneath Manhattan’s 34th Street, which will connect to Penn Station.

Scheduled to open in 2016, the $6 billion project is being managed by NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.