after more than two decades of promises the Hudson Bergen Light Rail extension is hitting yet another hurdle and this one could add two more years onto the project the federal government this week polled its notice of intent that gave the green line for New Jersey Transit to Begin work on an environmental impact study for construction the rail agency wants to extend the line by nine miles into Bergen County which was part of the original proposal for the light rail system but the federal government says it needs updated information the last application was submitted in 2018. joining me now to discuss this latest roadblock is nj.com transportation and commuting reporter Larry Higgs so what exactly is the Federal Transportation Administration asking for now well what they're asking for is basically seven items to be re-studied in the environmental impact statement for hudsonberg and Light Rail and the reason they're asking is because the original route for Hudson Bergen Light Rail was going to go to Tenafly and what happened was that route was truncated back to Englewood when the officials in Tenafly basically objected and said we don't want the light rail to come here so originally NJ Transit filed an environmental impact statement in 2007 that's how far back this project goes they filed a supplemental draft environmental impact statement in 2018 they held hearings on it in 2017 and it kind of sat dormant for a while so what the FTA is saying is because of these changes we need we need a do-over in parts of the Eis so NJ Transit is saying that it could add 24 months to the length of the project that's a very tentative estimate on their part well I guess the the other question though is which lawmakers from Bergen County pointed out in their sort of outrage over this why did it take the federal government five years to review this um study well there's a little bit of politics in there of course during the Trump Administration uh basically these reviews kind of went on hold the biggest example of that was the Gateway project so the same thing sort of happened here uh when there was a change in administration the fra started catching up on some of these projects and that's one of the reasons that was given for the delay up until this point in time is that they had the place of ketchup ball of course yeah I mean I'm just going to say Larry of course um the big sort of joke running joke here is that this line has never actually made it out of Hudson County despite the fact that you know a lot of this has been in the works since the early 90s so what are the next steps here to actually get this line built which a lot of folks here want done well I mean the biggest step is basically finding out what the FTA wants and finding a way to answer all those questions uh and hopefully doing it in the fastest way possible most effective way possible the most cost effective way possible you know the biggest thing is um NJ Transit is hoping for and some of the sponsors and the local officials are hoping that Federal money could pay for at least half this line which was estimated to cost roughly two billion dollars in 2020 money but the thing is obviously the longer you wait the more other states and other municipalities are able to get their applications in the pot of money dwindles yeah getting that money secured has been an issue all along okay Larry Higgs thank you so much my pleasure thank you