Port Authority reconstitutes version of the airport people-mover replacement, re-entering early design and procurement planning
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is restarting the replacement of the AirTrain Newark system as a roughly $3.5-billion program after bids for an earlier $2-billion procurement came back far above expectations.
The cost overrun forced the agency to abandon its original delivery model and rethink how the project could be built in a construction market that has changed significantly since the effort was first conceived.
Originally authorized in 2019 as a single design-build-operate-maintain (DBOM) procurement, the AirTrain replacement was intended to transfer long-term construction, systems and operational risk to one private consortium.
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Newark Liberty | Revised Procurement Strategy
Proposals received in 2022 reflected a changed reality far exceeding expectations amid pandemic-era cost escalation, supply-chain disruption and a sharp pullback in contractor appetite for megaproject risk, according to a Port Authority redevelopment presentation from September 2025. The agency canceled the procurement as planned and returned to the drawing board.
ENR has previously reported on earlier iterations of the AirTrain Newark replacement, including the original procurement and subsequent design activity, before the effort was halted and reworked. What has emerged now is not fundamentally different, but another way of delivering it.
Under the reformed program, the Port Authority has broken the work into smaller packages, separated system technology from civil infrastructure and advanced early works to reduce risk—changes that, along with inflation, account for much of the program’s total cost jumping to $3.5 billion.
The revised approach is now embedded in the authority’s current 10-year capital plan, with early design and procurement expected to advance during the current capital-plan period. Major construction is anticipated later in the decade, according to Port Authority documents.
A central constraint shaping staging and sequencing that has remained constant is that the current AirTrain must remain in operation throughout construction without interruption.
A Port Authority program map outlines the proposed scope of the AirTrain Newark replacement, showing new and existing alignments, planned stations, construction areas and a maintenance and control facility as part of the re-formed $3.5-billion program.
| Map courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Why replacement, not rehabilitation? The existing AirTrain Newark system—a first-generation automated people mover roughly three miles long and in service since 1996—has reached a lifecycle point where control-system obsolescence, unsupported electronics and declining reliability outweigh the benefits of incremental rehabilitation.
According to industry practice for first-generation automated people movers, retrofitting modern, software-based train control and diagnostics into legacy platforms is typically impractical in airport environments, where outages directly disrupt terminal operations.
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Port Authority officials have publicly acknowledged the reassessment. Speaking at ENR’s New York/New Jersey Infrastructure Forum last fall, Newark Liberty redevelopment director Ralph J. D’Apuzzo said the AirTrain replacement remains part of the airport’s broader modernization program and that lessons from earlier megaproject procurements are informing the authority’s delivery strategy and scope.
Under the new framework, the Port Authority is expected to use a design-build structure for major civil elements, with automated people-mover systems procured separately. Environmental approvals for the replacement corridor have been completed, with federal funds available through the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program.
For contractors, the reset positions the AirTrain Newark replacement as a major future airport infrastructure opportunity spanning elevated guideway and station construction, structural concrete and steel, electrical and communications work and full automated people-mover integration.
While no construction start date has been finalized, capital-plan projections place the bulk of work in the latter part of the 2020s, with additional procurement authorizations expected through future board actions.
