A new engineering report finds saltwater from Superstorm Sandy, which flooded the Hudson River rail tunnel two years ago, is causing corrosion problems inside the tunnel.

An Amtrak train pulls into Newark Penn Station
An Amtrak train pulls into Newark Penn Station (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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Major repair work will entail shutting down one of the two tracks inside the tunnel for an extended period of time, but Amtrak officials have rejected that scenario because it would severely limit service into and out of New York, for both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit passengers.

So what's the solution?

Major repairs will have to wait until Amtrak's new Hudson River Gateway rail tunnel is completed in about a decade, according to Amtrak spokesman Craig Schulz.

"That would enable us to move the traffic, the existing traffic into the new tunnel, and close the existing tunnel to perform the necessary work," he said. "The major work needs to be done on a 24/7 basis and will require closure, or removal of service of one of the tubes, and we just don't think that's an acceptable solution at this time to go relying on a single track between New York and New Jersey."

In the meantime, Schulz said Amtrak "will do interim work during the limited work windows that we have. I mean as it is now we do work during 55 hour outages on the weekends. We'll do the interim repair work that the report suggests we do in that time frame, in those windows."

He said this past August, a piece of concrete that was corroded from the storm fell onto one of the tracks, and the clean-up delayed service. This type of situation may be repeated in the months and years to come, he said, adding that this is more of a reliability issue than a safety problem.

"This is not a safety issue, it's a reliability issue," Schulz said. "The report assesses the structural integrity of the tubes and finds that was not compromised at all. The risk here is those kinds of things could happen with increasing frequency and obviously we don't want to see that happen."

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