Holland Tunnel

The Holland Tunnel is a vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River that connects the New York City neighborhood of Hudson Square in Lower Manhattan to the east with Jersey City to the west. The tunnel is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and carries Interstate 78; the New Jersey side is also designated the eastern terminus of Route 139. The Holland Tunnel is one of three vehicular crossings between Manhattan and New Jersey; the two others are the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge.

Plans for a fixed vehicular crossing over the Hudson River were first devised in 1906. However, disagreements prolonged the planning process until 1919, when it was decided to build a tunnel under the river. Construction of the Holland Tunnel started in 1920, and it opened in 1927. At the time of its opening, it was the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in the world.

The tunnel was originally known as the ''Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel'' or the ''Canal Street Tunnel''. It was renamed the ''Holland Tunnel'' in memory of Clifford Milburn Holland, the chief engineer, following his sudden death in 1924 before the tunnel was opened. The Holland Tunnel was the world's first mechanically ventilated tunnel; the ventilation system was designed by Ole Singstad, who oversaw the tunnel's completion.

Description

Tubes

The Holland Tunnel is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It consists of a pair of tubes with diameters, running roughly parallel to each other and apart underneath the Hudson River. The exteriors of each tube are composed of a series of cast iron rings, each of which comprises 14 curved steel pieces that are each long. The steel rings are covered by a layer of concrete.

Each tube provides a roadway with two lanes and of vertical clearance. The north tube is between portals, while the south tube is slightly shorter, at . If each tube's immediate approach roads are included, the north tube is long and the south tube long. Most vehicles carrying hazmats, trucks with more than three axles, and vehicles towing trailers cannot use the tunnel. There is a width limit of for vehicles entering the tunnel.

Both tubes' underwater sections are long and are situated in the silt beneath the river. The lowest point of the roadways is about below mean high water. The lowest point of the tunnel ceiling is about below mean high water.Holland Tunnel Statistics
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Accessed May 11, 2018. The tubes descend at a maximum grade of 4.06% and ascend at a grade of up to 3.8%. The tubes stretch an additional from the eastern shoreline to the New York portals, and from the western shoreline to the New Jersey portals.

These sections of the tunnel are more rectangular in shape, since they were built as open cuts that were later covered over. The walls and ceiling are furnished with glazed ceramic tiles, which were originally engineered to minimize staining. The majority of the tiles are white, but there is a two-tile-high band of yellow-orange tiles at the bottom of each tube's walls, as well as two-tile-high band of blue tiles on the top.

The northern tube, which carries westbound traffic, originates at Broome Street in Manhattan between Varick and Hudson Streets. It continues to 14th Street east of Marin Boulevard in Jersey City. The southern tube, for eastbound traffic, originates at 12th Street east of Marin Boulevard, and surfaces at the Holland Tunnel Rotary in Manhattan. The entrance and exit ramps to and from each portal are lined with granite and are wide. Although the two tubes' underwater sections are parallel and adjacent to each other, the tubes' portals on either side are located two blocks apart in order to reduce congestion on each side.

The Holland Tunnel's tubes initially contained a road surface made of Belgian blocks and concrete. This was replaced with asphalt in 1955. Each tube contains a catwalk on its left (inner) side, raised above the roadway. Five emergency-exit cross-passages connect the two tubes' inner catwalks. When the Holland Tunnel opened, the catwalk was equipped with police booths and a telephone system, stationed at intervals of .

The amount of traffic going through the Holland Tunnel has remained steady despite tight restrictions on eastbound traffic in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, including a ban on commercial traffic entering New York City put in place after an August 2004 threat. Aside from a sharp decline immediately following the September 11 attacks, the number of vehicles using the Holland Tunnel in either direction daily has steadily declined from a peak of 103,020 daily vehicles in 1999 to 89,792 vehicles in 2016. , the eastbound direction of the Holland Tunnel was used by 14,871,543 vehicles annually.

The Holland Tunnel was designed by Clifford Milburn Holland, chief engineer on the project, who died in October 1924, before it was completed. He was succeeded by Milton Harvey Freeman, who died less than a year after Holland did. Afterward, Ole Singstad oversaw the completion of the tunnel. The tunnel was designated a National Historic Civil and Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1982 and a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

Emergency services at the Holland Tunnel are provided by the Port Authority's Tunnel and Bridge Agents, who are stationed at the Port Authority's crossings.

Ventilation

The Holland Tunnel was the first mechanically ventilated underwater vehicular tunnel in the world. It contains a system of vents that run transverse, or perpendicular, to the tubes. Each side of the Hudson River has two ventilation shaft buildings: one on land, and one in the river approximately from the respective shoreline. All of the ventilation buildings have buff brick facades with steel and reinforced-concrete frames.

The shafts within the river rise above mean high water. Their supporting piers descend , of which are underwater and are embedded in the riverbed. The river shafts double as emergency exits by way of shipping piers that connected each ventilation shaft to the shoreline. The New York Land Ventilation Tower, a five-story building with a trapezoidal footprint, is tall. The New Jersey Land Ventilation Tower is a four-story, building with a rectangular perimeter.

The four ventilation towers contain a combined 84 fans. Of these, 42 are intake fans with varying capacities from per minute. The other 42 are exhaust fans, which can blow between per minute. At the time of the tunnel's construction, two-thirds of the 84 fans were being used regularly, while the other fans were reserved for emergency use. The fans blow fresh air into ducts, which provide air intake to the tunnel via openings at the tubes' curbside. The ceiling contains slits, which are used to exhaust air. The fans can replace all of the air inside the tunnel every 90 seconds. A forced ventilation system is essential because of the poisonous carbon monoxide component of automobile exhaust, which constituted a far greater percentage of exhaust gases before catalytic converters became prevalent.

Boyle Plaza

The approach to the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City begins where the lower level of Route 139 and the Newark Bay Extension merge. On May 6, 1936, the section of what became Route 139/I-78 between Jersey Avenue and Marin Boulevard was named in memory of John F. Boyle, the former interstate tunnel commissioner. Despite being part of the Interstate Highway System, I-78 and Route 139 run concurrently along 12th and 14th Streets to reach the Holland Tunnel. Westbound traffic uses 14th Street while eastbound traffic uses 12th Street. The plaza was restored and landscaped by the Jersey City government in 1982.

There is a nine-lane toll plaza for eastbound traffic only at the eastern end of 12th Street, just west of the tunnel portal. The original toll plaza had eight lanes; it was renovated in 1953–1954, and the current nine-lane tollbooth was constructed in 1988.

Holland Tunnel Rotary

Soon after construction of the tunnel, and amid rising vehicular traffic in the area, a railroad freight depot called the St. John's Park Terminal was abandoned and later demolished. The depot was located on the city block bounded by Laight, Varick, Beach and Hudson Streets. The depot's site was used as a storage yard until the 1960s, when it became a circular roadway for traffic exiting the eastbound tube in Manhattan. The original structure had four exits, but the plaza was renovated in the early 2000s with landscaping by Studio V Architecture and Ives Architecture Studio. A fifth exit was added in 2004.

Freeman Plaza

Originally used as the toll plazas for New Jersey-bound traffic, the small triangular patches of land at the mouth of the westbound tube entrance are referred to as Freeman Plaza or Freeman Square. The plaza is named after Milton Freeman, the engineer who took over the Holland Tunnel project after the death of Clifford Milburn Holland. The Freeman Plaza received its name just before the tunnel opened in 1927. The toll plaza was removed circa 1971 when the Port Authority stopped collecting tolls for New Jersey-bound drivers, and the square was later fenced off by the Port Authority. The small maintenance buildings for toll collectors were removed around 1982 or 1983. A bust of Holland sits outside the entrance to the westbound tube in Freeman Plaza.

A business improvement district for the area, the Hudson Square Connection, was founded in 2009 with the goal of repurposing the square for pedestrian use. Hudson Square Connection and the Port Authority collaborated to create a five-year, $27 million master plan for Freeman Plaza. In 2013, Freeman Plaza West was opened to the public. Bounded by Hudson, Broome, and Watts Streets, it features umbrellas, bistro tables and chairs, and tree plantings.

In 2014, Freeman Plaza East and Freeman Plaza North were opened on Varick and Broome Streets, respectively. The plazas contained chaise longues, bistro tables, and umbrellas. In 2016, the Hudson Square Connection added solar powered charging stations to both plazas, and introduced a summer lunchtime music series, called live@lunch. A statue by the artist Isamu Noguchi was also installed within the plaza. To the south of Freeman Plaza, between Varick, Watts, and Canal Streets, is the Holland Plaza Building, made a New York City designated landmark in 2013.

History

Need for vehicular tunnel

Until the first decade of the 20th century, passage across the lower Hudson River was possible only by ferry. The first tunnels to be bored below the Hudson River were for railroad use. The Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (now PATH) constructed two pairs of tubes to link the major railroad terminals in New Jersey with Manhattan Island: the Uptown Hudson Tubes, which opened in 1908, and the Downtown Hudson Tubes, which opened in 1909. The Pennsylvania Railroad's twin North River Tunnels, constructed to serve the new Pennsylvania Station, opened in 1910. The construction of these three tunnels proved that tunneling under the Hudson River was feasible. However, although train traffic was allowed to use the tunnel crossings, automotive traffic still had to be transported via ferry.

At the same time, freight traffic in the Port of New York and New Jersey was mostly carried on boats, but traffic had grown to such a point that the boats were at full capacity, and some freight started going to other ports in the United States. To alleviate this, officials proposed building a freight railroad tunnel, but this was blocked by the organized syndicates that held influence over much of the port's freight operations. The public learned of the excessive traffic loads on existing boat routes, as well as the limited capacity of the H&M and North River Tunnels, when the surface of the Hudson River froze in winter 1917, and again when Pennsylvania Railroad workers went on strike in winter 1918. One engineer suggested that three freight railroad tunnels would be cheaper to construct than one bridge.

Planning

Initial plans

In 1906, the New York and New Jersey Interstate Bridge Commission, a consortium of three groups, was formed to consider the need for a crossing across the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey. That year, three railroads asked the commission to consider building a railroad bridge over the river. In 1908, the commission considered building three bridges across the Hudson River at 57th, 110th, and 179th Streets in Manhattan. The reasoning was that bridges would be cheaper than tunnels. These three locations were considered to be the only suitable locations for suspension bridges; other sites were rejected on the grounds of aesthetics, geography, or traffic flows. John Vipond Davies, one of the partners for the consulting firm Jacobs and Davies (which had constructed the Uptown Hudson Tubes), wanted to build a vehicular tunnel between Canal Street, Manhattan, and 13th Street, Jersey City. This proposal would compete with the six-lane suspension bridge at 57th Street. Some plans provided for the construction of both the bridge and the tunnel. The ferries could not accommodate all of the 19,600 vehicles per day, as of 1913, that traveled between New York and New Jersey. The Bridge Commission hosted several meetings to tell truck drivers about the details of both the 57th Street Bridge and Canal Street Tunnel plans.

The United States Department of War brought up concerns about the 57th Street bridge plans: the span would need to be at least above the mean high water to avoid interfering with shipping. By comparison, the tunnel would be below mean water level. The Interstate Bridge Commission, which had been renamed the New York State Bridge and Tunnel Commission in April 1913, published a report that same month, stating that the Canal Street tunnel would cost $11 million while the 57th Street bridge would cost $42 million. In October 1913, Jacobs and Davies stated that a pair of tunnels, with each tube carrying traffic in one direction, would cost only $11 million, while a bridge might cost over $50 million. Moreover, the low elevation and deep bedrock of Lower Manhattan was more conducive to a tunnel than to a bridge. By the end of that year, the consulting engineers for both the 57th Street Bridge and the Canal Street Tunnel had submitted their plans to the Bridge and Tunnel Commission. New York City merchants mainly advocated for the tunnel plan, while New Jerseyans and New York automobile drivers mostly supported the bridge plan. Meanwhile, the New York State Bridge and Tunnel Commission indicated that it favored the Canal Street tunnel plan. On the other hand, the 57th Street bridge plan remained largely forgotten.

The Public Service Commission of New Jersey published a report in April 1917, stating that the construction of a Hudson River vehicle tunnel from Lower Manhattan to Jersey City was feasible. That June, following this report, New Jersey Governor Walter Evans Edge convened the Hudson River Bridge and Tunnel Commission of New Jersey, which would work with the New York Bridge and Tunnel Commission to construct the new tunnel. In March 1918, a report was sent to the New York State Legislature, advocating for the construction of the tunnel as soon as possible. That year, six million dollars in funding for the Hudson River Tunnel was proposed in two bills presented to subcommittees of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. The bill was voted down by the Interstate Commerce Committee before it could be presented to the full Senate.

Plans approved

The original plans for the Hudson River tunnel were for twin two-lane tubes, with each tube carrying traffic in a single direction. A request for proposals for the tunnel was announced in 1918, and eleven such requests were considered. One of these proposals, authored by engineer George Goethals, was for a bi-level tube. A modification of Jacobs and Davies' 1913 plan, the Goethals proposal specified that each level would carry three lanes of traffic, and that traffic on each level would run in a different direction. Goethals stated that his plan would cost $12 million and could be completed in three years. Subsequently, John F. O'Rourke offered to build the tunnel for $11.5 million. Goethals cited the area's freight traffic as one of the reasons for constructing the tube. His proposal would use a diameter shield to dig the tunnel. This large tunnel size was seen as a potential problem, since there were differences in the air pressure at the top and the bottom of each tunnel, and that air pressure difference increased with a larger tunnel diameter. Thus, five engineers were assigned to examine the feasibility of Goethals's design. In July 1919, President Woodrow Wilson ratified a Congressional joint resolution for a trans-Hudson tunnel, and Clifford Milburn Holland was named the Chief Engineer of the project. Holland stated that, based on the construction methods used for both pairs of H&M tubes (and for the downtown pair in particular), it should be relatively easy to dig through the mud on the bottom of the Hudson River, and that construction should be completed within two years.

The federal government refused to finance the project, even in part, and so it was the states' responsibility to raise the funds. In June 1919, U.S. Senator and former New Jersey governor Edge presented another iteration of the Hudson River Tunnel bill to the U.S. Senate, where it was approved. The New York and New Jersey governments signed a contract in September 1919, in which the states agreed to build, operate, and maintain the tunnel in partnership. The contract was signed by the states' respective tunnel commissions in January 1920.

Under Holland's plan, each of the two tubes would have an outside diameter of including exterior linings, and the tubes would contain two-lane roadways with a total width of . One lane would be for slower traffic, and the other would be for faster traffic. This contrasted with Goethals's plan, wherein the three roadways would have had a total width of , only a few feet wider than Holland's two-lane roadways. Additionally, according to Holland, the 42-foot-wide tube would require the excavation of more dirt than both 29-foot tubes combined: two circles with 29-foot diameters would have a combined area of , while a circle with a 42-foot diameter would have an area of . The more northerly westbound tube would begin at Broome and Varick Streets on the Manhattan side and end at the now-demolished intersection of 14th and Provost Streets on the New Jersey side. The more southerly eastbound tube would begin at the still-intact intersection of 12th and Provost Streets in Jersey City, and end at the south side of Canal Street near Varick Street. By way of comparison, Goethals's plan would have combined the entrance and exit plazas on each side. The Motor Truck Association of America unsuccessfully advocated for three lanes in each tube.

Even though Goethals's method of digging had not been tested, he refused to concede to Holland's proposal, and demanded to see evidence that Holland's proposal would work. The New York and New Jersey Tunnel Commission subsequently rejected Goethals's plan in favor of a twin-tube proposal that Holland had devised, which was valued at around $28.7 million. When Goethals asked why, the commission responded that Goethals's proposal had never been tested; that it was too expensive; and that the tunnel plans had many engineering weaknesses that could cause the tube to flood. Additionally, while a tube with three lanes in each direction would be able to handle more traffic than a tube with two lanes, projections showed that traffic on the tunnel's approach roads could barely handle the amount of traffic going to and from the two-lane tubes, and that widening the approach roads on each side would cost millions of dollars more. The commission then voted to forbid any further consideration of Goethals's plan. Holland defended his own plan by pointing out that the roadways in Goethals's plan would not only feature narrower road lanes, but also would have ventilation ducts that were too small to ventilate the tube efficiently.

In May 1920, the New Jersey legislature voted to approve the start of construction, overriding a veto from the New Jersey governor. The same month, the New York governor signed a similar bill that had been passed in the New York legislature. The legislature of New Jersey approved a $5 million bond issue for the tunnel in December 1920.

Construction

The first bid for constructing the Hudson River Tunnel, a contract for digging two of the tunnel's eight planned shafts, was advertised in September 1920. A groundbreaking for the Hudson River Tunnel's ventilation shaft, which marked the official start of construction on the tunnel, occurred on October 12, 1920, at Canal and Washington Streets on the Manhattan side. However, further construction of the Hudson River Tunnel was soon held up due to concerns over its ventilation system. There was also a dispute over whether the New York City government should pay for street-widening projects on the New Jersey side. Further delays arose when the New York and New Jersey tunnel commissions could not agree over which agency would award the contract to build the construction and ventilation shafts.

Ventilation system

The most significant design aspect of the Holland Tunnel is its ventilation system; it is served by four ventilation towers designed by Norwegian architect Erling Owre. At the time of its construction, underwater tunnels were a well-established part of civil engineering, but no long vehicular tunnels had been built, as all of the existing tunnels under New York City waterways carried only railroads and subways. These tubes did not have as much of a need for ventilation, since the trains that used the tubes were required to be electrically powered, and thus emitted very little pollution. On the other hand, the traffic in the Holland Tunnel consisted mostly of gasoline-driven vehicles, and ventilation was required to evacuate the carbon monoxide emissions, which would otherwise asphyxiate the drivers. There were very few tunnels at that time that were not used by rail traffic; the most notable of these non-rail tunnels, the Blackwall Tunnel and Rotherhithe Tunnel in London, did not need mechanical ventilation. However, a tunnel of the Hudson River Tunnel's length required an efficient method of ventilation, so Chief Engineer Singstad pioneered a system of ventilating the tunnel transversely (perpendicular to the tubes).

In October 1920, General George R. Dyer, the chairman of the New York Tunnel Commission, published a report in which he stated that Singstad had devised a feasible ventilation system for the Hudson River Tunnel. Working with Yale University, the University of Illinois, and the United States Bureau of Mines, Singstad built a test tunnel in the bureau's experimental mine at Bruceton, Pennsylvania, measuring over long, where cars were lined up with engines running. Volunteer students were supervised as they breathed the exhaust in order to confirm air flows and tolerable carbon monoxide levels by simulating different traffic conditions, including backups. The University of Illinois, which had hired the only professors of ventilation in the United States, built an experimental ventilation duct at its Urbana campus to test air flows. In October 1921, Singstad concluded that a conventional, longitudinal ventilation system would have to be pressurized to an air flow rate of along the tunnel. On the other hand, the tunnel could be adequately ventilated transversely if the compartment carrying the tube's roadway was placed in between two plenums. A lower plenum below the roadway floor could supply fresh air, and an upper plenum above the ceiling could exhaust fumes at regular intervals.

Two thousand tests were performed with the ventilation system prototype. The system was determined to be of sufficiently low cost, relative to the safety benefits, that it was ultimately integrated into the tunnel's design. By the time the tunnel was in service, the average carbon monoxide content in both tunnels was 0.69 parts per 10,000 parts of air. The highest recorded carbon monoxide level in the Holland Tunnel was 1.60 parts per 10,000, well below the permissible maximum of 4 parts per 10,000. The public and the press proclaimed air conditions were better in the tubes than in some streets of New York City; after the tunnel opened, Singstad stated that the carbon monoxide content in the tubes were half of those recorded on the streets.

Tunnel boring

The ventilation system and other potential issues had been resolved by December 1921, and officials announced that the tunnel would break ground the following spring. Builders initially considered building a trench at the bottom of the Hudson River and then covering it up, but this was deemed infeasible because of the soft soil that comprised the riverbed, as well as the heavy maritime traffic that used the river. Officials started purchasing the properties in the path of the tunnel's approaches, evicting and compensating the tenants "without delay" so that construction could commence promptly. A bid to construct the tubes was advertised, and three firms responded. On March 29, 1922, the contract to dig the tubes was awarded to the lowest bidder, Booth & Flinn Ltd., for $19.3 million. The materials that were necessary to furnish the Hudson River Tunnel had already been purchased, so it was decided to start work immediately. Construction on the bores began two days later as workers broke ground for an air compressor to drive the tubes. The ceremony for the air compressor was held at the corner of Canal and West Streets on the Manhattan side. The workers who were performing the excavations, who were referred to as " sandhogs", were to dig each pair of tubes from either bank of the Hudson River, so that the two sides would eventually connect somewhere underneath the riverbed. The tunnel was to be long between portals, and the roadway was to descend to a maximum depth of below mean high water level.

The start of construction for the tubes from the New Jersey side was delayed because the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel Commission had not yet acquired some of the land for the project. Although Jersey City officials had insisted that the Tunnel Commission widen 12th and 14th Streets in Jersey City, these officials were involved in a disagreement over sale prices with the Erie Railroad, which owned some of the land that was to be acquired for the street widening. As a result, work on the Hudson River Tunnel was delayed by one year and could not be completed before 1926 at the earliest. Work on the New Jersey side finally started on May 30, 1922, after Jersey City officials continued to refuse to cede public land for the construction of the tunnel's plazas. The Jersey City Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter that denounced this action, since the New Jersey Tunnel Commission's members on the Hudson River Tunnel Commission had not been notified of the groundbreaking until they read about it in the following day's newspapers. In mid-June, a state chancellor made permanent an injunction that banned Jersey City officials from trying to preclude construction on the Hudson River Tunnel. The Hudson River Tunnel Commission ultimately decided that Jersey City would not have its own groundbreaking celebration due to the city's various efforts at blocking the tunnel's construction. However, although Jersey City officials had been primarily accused of delaying construction, officials from both states had wanted the Tunnel Commission to widen the approach streets to the Hudson River Tunnel as part of the construction process.

For the project, six tunnel digging shields were to be delivered. These shields comprised cylinders whose diameters were wider than the tunnel bores, and these cylinders contained steel plates of various thicknesses on the face that was to be driven under the riverbed. Four of the shields would dig the Hudson River Tunnel under the river, while the remaining two shields would dig from the Hudson River west bank to the Jersey City portals. They could dig through rock at a rate of per day, or through mud at a daily rate of . The air compressors would provide an air pressure of . The shovels used to dig the tunnel were provided by the Marion Power Shovel Company, while the six digging shields were built by the Merchants Shipbuilding Corporation. The air compressor was completed in September 1922, and the first shield was fitted into place in the Manhattan side's construction shaft. By this point, the shafts on the New Jersey side were being excavated, and two watertight caissons were being constructed.

The shield started boring in late October of that year after the steel plates that were necessary for the shield's operation had been delivered. The first permanent steel-rings lining the tubes were laid a short time afterward. The caissons were completed and launched into the river in December, and after the caissons were outfitted with the requisite equipment such as airlocks, tugboats dropped the caissons into place in January 1923. Officials projected that at this rate of progress, the tunnel would be finished within 36 months, by late 1926 or early 1927.

Tunnel construction required the sandhogs to spend large amounts of time in the caisson under high pressure of up to , which was thought to be necessary to prevent river water from entering prior to completion of the tubes. The caissons were massive metal boxes with varying dimensions, but each contained walls. Sandhogs entered the tunnel through a series of airlocks, and could only remain inside of the tunnel for a designated time period. On exiting the tunnel, sandhogs had to undergo controlled decompression to avoid decompression sickness or "the bends", a condition in which nitrogen bubbles form in the blood from rapid decompression. The rate of decompression rate for sandhogs working on the Hudson River Tunnel was described as being "so small as to be negligible". Sandhogs underwent such decompressions 756,000 times throughout the course of construction. which resulted in 528 cases of the bends, though none were fatal. The tunnel's pressurization caused other problems, including a pressure blowout in April 1924 that flooded the tube.

Due to the geology of the river, the shields digging from the New Jersey side were mostly being driven through mud, and so could be driven at a faster rate than the shields from the New York side, which were being dug through large rock formations. When workers tried to dig through the Manhattan shoreline, they had encountered several weeks of delay due to the existence of an as-yet-unrecorded granite bulkhead on the shoreline. In September 1923, after having proceeded about from the Manhattan shoreline, workers encountered a sheet of Manhattan schist under the riverbed, forcing them to slow shield digging operations from to less than . This outcropping was fed from a stream in Manhattan that emptied into the Hudson River. The sandhogs planned to use small explosive charges to dig through the rock shelf without damaging the shield. By December 1923, about of each tube's total length had been excavated, and the first of the shields had passed through the underwater shafts that had been sunk during construction. Due to these unexpected issues, the cost estimate for the tunnel was increased from $28 million to $42 million in January 1924. By March 1924, all seven of the ventilation shafts had been dug, and three of the four shields that were digging underwater had passed through their respective underwater construction shafts, with the fourth shield nearing its respective shaft.

Workers also performed tests to determine whether they could receive radio transmissions while inside the tunnel. They found that they were able to receive transmissions within much of the Hudson River Tunnel. However, a New Jersey radio station later found that there was a spot in the middle of the tunnel that had no reception.

The cost of the project increased as work progressed. In July 1923, the New York and New Jersey Vehicular Tunnel Commission had revised plans for the entrance and exit plazas on each side to accommodate an increase in traffic along Canal Street on the Manhattan side. The commission had spent $2.1 million to acquire land. Further redesigns were made in January 1924 due to a change of major components in the tunnel plan, including tunnel diameters and ventilation systems, which had increased the cost by another $14 million.

Nearing completion

The two ends of both tubes were scheduled to be "holed through", or connected to each other, at a ceremony on October 29, 1924, in which President Calvin Coolidge would have remotely set off an explosion to connect the two sides of the tunnel. However, two days before the holing-through ceremony supposed to take place, Holland died of a heart attack at the sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, aged 41. Individuals cited in ''The New York Times'' attributed his death to the stress he endured overseeing the tunnel's construction. The ceremony was postponed out of respect for Holland's death. The tunnel was ultimately holed through on October 29, but it was a nondescript event without any ceremony. On November 12, 1924, the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel was renamed the Holland Tunnel by the two states' respective tunnel commissions. Holland was succeeded by Milton Harvey Freeman, who died of pneumonia in March 1925, after several months of heading the job. After Freeman's death, the position was occupied by Ole Singstad, who oversaw the completion of the tunnel.

As part of the tunnel project, one block of Watts Street in Manhattan was to be widened to accommodate traffic heading toward the westbound tube. Sixth Avenue was also widened and extended between Greenwich Village and Church Street. Ten thousand people were evicted to make way for the Sixth Avenue extension. The north-south Church Street was widened and extended southward to Trinity Place; West Street was expanded and supplemented with an elevated highway; and the west-east Vestry and Laight Streets were also widened. On the New Jersey side, the Holland Tunnel was to connect a new highway (formerly the Route 1 Extension; now New Jersey Route 139), which extended westward to Newark. This included a viaduct, rising from 12th and 14th Streets, at the bottom of the Palisades, to the new highway, at the top of the Palisades. The New Jersey highway approach was opened in stages beginning in 1927, and most of that highway was finished in 1930.

The construction of the tunnel approach roads on the New Jersey side was delayed for months by the Erie Railroad, whose Bergen Arches right-of-way ran parallel to and directly south of Route 139, in the right of way of the proposed approach roads. Although the Erie had promised to find another site for its railroad yards, it had refused to respond to the plans that the New Jersey State Highway Commission had sent them. In March 1925, the Highway Commission decided that construction on the approach roads would begin regardless of Erie's response, and so the land would be taken using eminent domain. This led to a legal disagreement between the Erie and the Highway Commission. The Erie maintained that it absolutely needed 30 feet of land along 12th Street, while the Highway Commission stated that the most direct approach to the eastbound Holland Tunnel's 12th Street portal should be made using 12th Street. The commission rejected a suggestion that it should use 13th Street, one block north, because it would cost $500,000 more and involve two perpendicular turns. In October 1926, one million dollars was allocated to the completion of the Route 139 approach.

The contracts for constructing the Holland Tunnel's ventilation systems were awarded in December 1925. Two months later, the New York-New Jersey Vehicular Tunnel Commission asked for $3.2 million more in funding. The tunnel was now expected to cost $46 million, an increase of $17 million over what was originally budgeted. The Holland Tunnel was nearly complete: in March 1926, Singstad stated that the tunnel was expected to be opened by the following February. By May 1926, the tubes had been almost completely furnished: the polished-white tile walls were in place, as were the bright lighting systems and the Belgian-block-and-concrete road surfaces. The north tube's tiles were sourced locally (by the Sonzogni Brothers of Union City, New Jersey

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