Sigvald Johannesson (1877–1953) was a civil engineer best known for his design of the

Pulaski Skyway The Pulaski Skyway is a four-lane bridge-causeway in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of New Jersey, carrying an expressway designated U.S. Route 1/9 (US 1/9) for most of its length. The structure has a total length of . Its ...

. Johannesson was a graduate of the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

who later worked on the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

. He emigrated to the United States and worked on the

North River Tunnels The North River Tunnels are a pair of rail tunnels that carry Amtrak and New Jersey Transit passenger lines under the Hudson River between Weehawken, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Built between 1904 ...

and the

Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) is a rapid transit system in the northeastern New Jersey cities of Newark, Harrison, Jersey City, and Hoboken, as well as Lower and Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is operated as a wholly owned sub ...

tunnels under the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. He joined the New Jersey Highway Department (now the

New Jersey Department of Transportation The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) is the agency responsible for transportation issues and policy in New Jersey, including maintaining and operating the state's highway and public road system, planning and developing transporta ...

) during the early development of the Skyway project and is considered to be responsible for its ultimate design. Johannesson worked the agency until his retirement in 1948 as head of the Division of Planning and Economics. In 1931, he published a seminal work entitled ''Highway Economics''. He died in 1953.https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0914FC3C5A107B93C1AB1789D85F478585F9 obit 1953

References

1877 births 1953 deaths Danish civil engineers American civil engineers People from New Jersey {{denmark-bio-stub