WESTFIELD – It certainly was a “New Jersey” day for Mayor Pete.

No longer a presidential candidate, nor the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Transportation Secretary, began his Garden State visit Monday morning with a ride on a commuter train.

He ended it getting heckled by a loudmouth after a press conference at town hall.

In between, there was some important stuff to talk about.

Buttigieg was a guest of CD-7 Congressman Tom Malinowski and the topic was a massive, bipartisan infrastructure bill moving through the U.S. Senate. Democrats hope to pass the bill and combine it with a much larger spending package that includes funding for community colleges and other topics.

It was the first bill that got the attention today.

As they both disembarked at the town train station after riding the rails from Somerville, Malinowski, a bit deadpanned, said the trip was “exciting.”

The men then moved to town hall for a “roundtable” discussion with an array of municipal officials representing towns along the Raritan Valley line, which runs through Union and west to Hunterdon County.

There’s no debate that good train service helps attract businesses, raises property values and reduces pollution. All of that was brought up. But some officials had specific concerns – such as a bridge or a “flyover” to eliminate a bottleneck where tracks converge near Newark Penn Station and a “one-seat” ride straight into Manhattan.

Central to those and other improvements is a new rail tunnel under the Hudson, which is included in the infrastructure bill before the Senate.

“We’re not just talking about hopes and dreams,” Malinowski said.

For a long time it seemed that way. What was then called the ARC tunnel, or Access to the Region’s Core, was seemingly ready to go a decade ago but then-Gov. Chris Christie killed it. More recently, the Trump administration showed no interest in the project.

There was a time when major transportation projects were immune from petty and regional politics. After all, when the interstate highway system was conceived under Dwight Eisenhower, it was understood that both Democrats and Republicans drove cars.

But with politics encompassing just about everything today, what is now called the Gateway Project got new life when Joe Biden became president.

Malinowski said the new tunnel could be as significant as the interstate highway project and he lamented that here in 2021, the region must depend on rail tunnels under the Hudson that were constructed with the best technology 1910 had to offer.

The bill before the Senate is a compromise, meaning it’s less than what Biden originally proposed. Still, it would mean billions for highways, bridges and water projects throughout the land, including almost $7 billion for New Jersey. So a new tunnel is only part of the whole package.

There’s been some talk that liberals in the House may not go along with the bill, presuming it passes the Senate.

But Malinowski dismissed those concerns, confidently proclaiming, “It will pass the House.”

Buttigieg said that like all compromises, both parties had to give a little.

After the press event broke up, a man in the audience started yelling that he represents a LGBT group that is pro-Trump and opposed to Buttigieg, who is gay.

Welcome to New Jersey, Pete.