After years of stops and starts, digging has begun on the Gateway Program's Hudson Tunnel Project - and it requires a hefty piece of machinery.

The 28-foot-tall, 500-foot-long tunnel boring machine has begun digging through the Palisades Cliffs. It will go under the Hudson River, creating a new train tunnel by the next decade.

“I have dreamed about this day for a long time," said Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

So have New Jersey-New York commuters frustrated by transit delays.

This machine took three years to build in Germany, disassemble for shipping, rebuild and now start digging. There are two - each one cost $25 million.

“It will cut the rock, break it," said Gateway chief of program delivery Jim Starace. "It will drop it through the cutter head opening onto a conveyor, it’ll be conveyored back and it’ll be dropped into carts, which will be railed out.”

Starace said the work is so far below ground, that North Bergen residents and commuters won’t hear or see a thing. The machines will spend the next year boring nearly a mile through the Palisades - 30 feet per day - ending in Weehawken. Then, a second set of machines will start tunneling under the Hudson. 

The end result will be a new train tunnel between New Jersey and New York City by 2035.

“It’s been a hard, but worthy fight," said Sherrill.

The project has endured funding freezes and lawsuits from the federal government - including a week-long construction pause in February. Now that the machine is tunneling, it is said to be full speed ahead.

“We don’t have that much more to go," said Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "But I know when all is said and done, generations not yet born will benefit from the work that we have done.”

The current, century-old tunnel will be rehabilitated - doubling the rail crossings between states by 2038.