Where is the Holland Tunnel?
The most interesting of the world’s great tunnels are those which go under rivers. One of the largest of these is the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel, popularly known as the Holland Tunnel. It is one of the most remarkable engineering feats of our day. It consists of twin tubes 9,250 feet long, each having a roadway 20 feet wide. Traffic, running one way in each tube, is divided into two lanes, one for slow travel and one for fast. Trucks and commercial vehicles are usually sent on the slow lane so that passenger traffic need not be held to their rate of speed.
Before the tunnel was built, the only way in which a motorist could cross from New York to New Jersey, or vice versa, was by driving the car on a ferry and being ferried across the river. This was very slow both because a boat does not travel fast and because a ferry can carry only a few cars at a time. Traffic would collect at the dock and have to wait in line for the next boat, and on popular driving days, such as Sundays and holidays, it would sometimes be necessary to wait for hours to be taken across. It can easily be seen what a great help the tunnel is, as an automobile can go through in a few minutes.
The construction of such a long underwater tunnel involved many engineering problems, chief of which was the difficulty of keeping the tunnel free of the poisonous gases discharged from the motors. After many experiments, this was accomplished by building four ventilating stations, one at each end of the tunnel, one in the river near the New York side, and the other in the river near the New Jersey side. Fresh air is forced, by means of ventilating fans at each of these stations, into the tunnel through a lower air duct, from which it passes into chambers on each side of the roadway and then into the roadway itself. The fresh air causes the exhaust gases to rise and by suction they are carried off through the openings at the top.
Lined with white glazed tiles, kept beautifully clean, the interior presents a very pleasing appearance. Along one side is a narrow railed walk where watchmen are on duty at all times of the day and night to direct traffic and to help any motorist who is forced to stop.
The tunnel was named in honor of Clifford M. Holland, the chief engineer who successfully planned and directed the work until his death, when the tunnel was nearing completion. It was first opened November 13, 1927. Over 52,000 automobiles passed through it on that day.
It was not long before traffic between New York and New Jersey grew too heavy for the Holland Tunnel to serve all of it. On October 25, 1931, the great George Washington Bridge was opened, and in December, 1937, another tunnel, the Lincoln, began to take some of the stream of cars. On the pages that follow we show you pictures of various kinds of tunnels.
