"The prospect that it could happen tomorrow keeps many of us up at night," Democratic New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer said at a news conference Friday.

The alarm bells continue to sound Washington.

"This is a real threat, a threat to the economies of New York and New Jersey," Republican Rep. Peter King said.

Gottheimer of New Jersey and King say if one or both of the decaying North River rail tunnels under the Hudson goes, the northeast would have a one-way ticket to doomsday.

"We also know that the tunnel is 110 years old," Gottheimer said. "It's literally crumbling, and the chairman of Amtrak himself said that one of the tunnels will likely have to be shut down within the next five years."

The congressmen cite a recent report from the Regional Plan Association reiterating what many already were saying: tunnel failure is a catastrophic event waiting to happen but is preventable.

The Gateway Project would solve or at least significantly alleviate the threat of the tunnel failure. A large part of the endeavor involves two new tunnels being bored underneath the Hudson while rehabilitating the existing ones.

That all costs time and money, though. The Obama Administration signed off on a funding deal originally between the feds, New York, and New Jersey, but the project stopped dead in its tracks when Donald Trump assumed the presidency.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited the White House twice to lobby for the project, and while the president seemed receptive to restarting things, progress appears stalled.

"We need transportation up and down the East Coast if, God forbid, there was another disaster," King said. "To have antiquated tunnels ready to crumble would take a terrible situation and make it even worse."

King and Gottheimer plan to introduce legislation to force the White House and Department of Transportation to have a contingency plan incorporating travel for passengers and freight in the event the current tunnels are compromised.

"I want to see it, I want to look at it, I want to go over it, and then give them credit if they found a way to avoid this crisis," King said. "If not, then it's a terrible hoax for the people of New York and New Jersey and its entirely damaging to our entire region."

Photo above courtesy of Victor J. Blue/The New York Times via AP, Pool.