Lincoln Tunnel Research Paper

The Lincoln Tunnel is an amazing feat for when it was built. They did not have computers, they could not do simulations, they did not have advanced equipment. Ole Singstad was the engineer who built the lincoln tunnel. Everything had to be done by hand. They had to draw what they wanted the tunnel to look like. The two crews started one and a half miles apart. It was amazing that they could meet up at one certain point without knowing where the other group was at. There would have been no way to know if you went off course or not. It was an incredible accomplishment and it changed transportation into New York forever.

The Lincoln tunnel was possible thanks to tunneling shield technology. This was used to be able to dig under a body of water. Marc Isambard Brunel and Thomas Cochrane built this

technology. In this case it was under the hudson river which separates New Jersey from Manhattan. It looks like a massive cylinder. They were around 100 feet below water so workers had to walk through a stage of compression and decompression chambers. They had to wait till the pressure met the next rooms pressure before they went inside. It is the same process that divers have to go through when they come out of the water. Unfortunately they could only work for a certain amount of time because of the pressure. So work did not go very fast.
Work started on the first tunnel in March of 1934. The first thing they had to do was start removing some dirt. There would be large squares where workers would dig out dirt. Workers were commonly referred to as sandhogs. They used rock drillers and other common tools at that time. Unfortunately they could only work for a certain amount of time because of the pressure. So work did not go very fast. Then when they got to a certain distance they would insert a huge metal ring. There was a metal arm that was apart of the shield so they hooked up the ring to that and used the arm to put it in place. They built hundreds of these rings onsite. One ring weighed twenty one tons. They would fill the rings with cement and that would form the outside shell of the tunnel. This was not a fast process. Though it did get a little bit better as they went along because they had a surface to walk on and they were not just inside the tunneling shield. The dimensions of the tunnel were 21 feet(width) by 31 feet(diameter). Progress has started to have been made.
Just over a year later the two sides (New York and New Jersey) met on August 3, 1935. One worker, not knowingly, made it to New York’s side of the tunnel. Then they had to remove the remaining dirt and build the road. The lining of the tubes are covered in millions of tiles. They finished tube and it opened on December 22, 1937. Now it was time to build the second tube so they had to do everything over again. Work had to stop in 1938 because of the shortage of supplies due to WWII. Metal was used for building things for the military. But work started back up in 1941. The tunnel finally opened on February 1, 1945. People were charged fifty cents to go through. These tunnels were a booming success. So much that there was a need to build a third tunnel. The third tunnel opened on May 25, 1957.
The Lincoln Tunnel was built after the Holland tunnel. The Holland tunnel connects Jersey City and Manhattan. It was the first one to do so. The Lincoln tunnel wanted to be even better than the Holland tunnel. It accomplished that the Lincoln tunnel had the first ever ventilation system in a tunnel. This ventilation system gets rid of car exhaust in the tunnel. There were also no reported deaths while building the tunnel. 14 people died building the Holland tunnel including the person in charge Mr. Holland. It was also a very good investment that was funded by the New Deal’s Administration. They built a tunnel because it was cheaper than building a bridge. They would also have to worry about freighters going by if they built a bridge. At that time construction costed 85 million dollars. That is equivalent to 1.5 billion dollars today. However, they have made their money back. They charged .50 cents when it first opened. Now they charge 15 dollars per car. Many people will use ez-pass which is a way of paying instead of having to give the cashier money every time you go through. The Lincoln tunnel was named after Abraham Lincoln. Like the George Washington bridge is named after president George Washington.
Today, the Lincoln tunnel is one the most used tunnel in the world.

Not only is it the busiest tunnel, it is also one of the busiest roads in the whole country. The morning rush hour is classified as 6:00-10:00a.m. During those four hours, 1700 buses go through. Carrying thousands of people. 62,000 people use the lincoln tunnel to go to work daily. 21 million cars go through the tunnel annually. But because of the number of people that go through it daily, it is considered one of the most high-risk sites for a terrorist attack in the whole country. A plan was stopped in the summer of 1993. Not only would a lot of people die there would also be many economic problems.

At first the Lincoln tunnel seemed impossible, it was just an idea that someone had. Looking back it was a very good idea because it has become the most used tunnel in the whole world. It changed commuting to Manhattan completely. New York would not as busy as a state if it wasn’t for the lincoln tunnel. People would not be able to get there as quickly so they would work somewhere else and not in New York. All it took was one person’s idea to change commuting as people knew it in New York and New

Jersey.