The commission overseeing the $16bn Hudson River tunnel has filed a lawsuit to force the Trump administration to restore funding just days before construction of the project – the linchpin of rail travel between New York and New Jersey – is set to halt on Friday. The Gateway Development Commission, which was created by New York and New Jersey in 2019 to oversee the project, said that, without federal funding this week, it “will be unable to pay its contractors to continue construction activities, causing work on this critical project to grind to a halt – leaving unfinished work sites with massive holes in the ground, threatening the livelihoods of the many hundreds of construction employees working on the project . . . and putting into question the future viability of the project.”