Workers were winding down their construction activity on the biggest transportation infrastructure project in the nation as the Trump administration’s prolonged suspension of its funding threatened to bring work to a halt on Friday.
The project, known as Gateway, centers on a new $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey. Nearly 1,000 people have been working at sites on both sides of the Hudson and in the river, and more than $1 billion has already been spent, according to the project’s planners, the Gateway Development Commission.
Nearly all of that work was scheduled to stop on Friday unless federal officials agreed to restore Gateway’s funding or a court ordered them to.
The commission sued the government for breach of contract in a federal court in Washington on Monday, contending that it was owed more than $200 million in expenses that had not been reimbursed. The states of New York and New Jersey filed a separate suit in federal court in Manhattan this week.
“We’re just in shutdown mode,” said Guido Rivieccio, as he stood on a hushed construction site on the western edge of Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, surrounded by fellow workers who feared they could be out of work by Saturday.
Mr. Rivieccio, a shop steward for Local 731 of the Laborers’ Union, said his crews had spent much of the week “wrapping everything up.” That involved laying down the booms of giant yellow and red-and-white cranes and blowing liquid out of utility lines to prevent freezing.
The workers were preparing for a pause of unpredictable duration, so they would not remove the cranes and other equipment from the sites just yet, said Thomas Prendergast, the chief executive of the Gateway commission.
“If the pause is going to be days and weeks, it could stay here,” he said. “If it’s going to be months, that would be a different story.”
Some of the workers facing layoffs were working on barges in the ice-filled Hudson River, driving “king piles” into the river’s bottom, Mr. Prendergast said. But at least a few of them would have to remain, to protect the work that has been completed and to steer ships away from it, he said.
Elected officials from New York and New Jersey held out hope that the Trump administration would relent before the end of the week.
Federal transportation officials had said that the suspension would last until a review of the project’s contracts for compliance with new policies regarding diversity could be completed. Catherine Rinaldi, executive vice president of the commission, said it had responded to all of the transportation department’s requests and that all of its contracts with disadvantaged businesses had been “appropriately certified.”
The White House gave a different reason for the prolonged suspension in a statement last month, pinning responsibility on Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and other Democrats for refusing to negotiate and alluding to their stances on immigration policies.
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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