page_title: Lincoln Tunnel
section_title: Opening and early years
hierarchical_section_title: Lincoln Tunnel / History / First tube / Opening and early years
caption_attribution_description: English: View east along New Jersey State Route 495 (Lincoln Tunnel Approach) at the western entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in Weehawken Township, Hudson County, New Jersey
context_page_description: The Lincoln Tunnel is an approximately 1.5-mile-long tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting Weehawken, New Jersey, to the west with Midtown Manhattan in New York City to the east. It was designed by Ole Singstad and named after Abraham Lincoln. The tunnel consists of three vehicular tubes of varying lengths, with two traffic lanes in each tube. The center tube contains reversible lanes, while the northern and southern tubes exclusively carry westbound and eastbound traffic, respectively.
  The Lincoln Tunnel was originally proposed in the late 1920s and early 1930s as the Midtown Hudson Tunnel. The tubes of the Lincoln Tunnel were constructed in stages between 1934 and 1957. Construction of the central tube, which originally lacked sufficient funding due to the Great Depression, started in 1934 and it opened in 1937. The northern tube started construction in 1936, was delayed due to World War II-related material shortages, and opened in 1945. Although the original plans for the Lincoln Tunnel called for two tubes, a third tube to the south of the existing tunnels was planned in 1950 due to high traffic demand on the other two tubes.
context_section_description: The first tube was formally dedicated on December 21, 1937. The opening ceremony was accompanied by a military parade on the New Jersey side, as well as the detonation of a series of aerial bombs launched from military ships. It was also marked by separate speeches from New York City Mayor La Guardia and the governors of New York and New Jersey. The first vehicles began passing through the tube at 4:00 AM the next day. The sculptor Julio Kilenyi created a commemorative medal for the tunnel's opening ceremony, having created similar medals for the opening of the Holland Tunnel and George Washington Bridge.
  The newly opened tube carried traffic in both directions. Passenger cars traveling in either direction were charged 50 cents for single trips, the same as on the Holland Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, and the three bridges between Staten Island and New Jersey. If passenger-car drivers were traveling to or from Staten Island within the same trip, they paid 75 cents. Different toll rates applied to tractor-trailers, who paid $2, and motorcycles, who paid 25 cents. Pedestrians, animals, and bicyclists were prohibited from using the tunnel. Due to the limited capacity of the new tube, heavy trucks were temporarily banned, and a minimum speed limit of 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) was imposed until a second tube could be completed. Two gasoline-electric tow trucks, dubbed as the largest of their kind, were delivered to the Lincoln Tunnel in case a vehicle broke down. Two hundred staff were hired to oversee day-to-day operations of the tunnel, working at an administration building on the New Jersey side. Two telephone systems were also installed within the tunnel, one for communicating with workers in the administration building and the other for contacting emergency services.
  The tube was used by 3,700 vehicles within the first 12 hours of its opening, and by 7,661 vehicles within the first 24 hours. The Port Authority devised a slogan to encourage motorists to use the tunnel, advertising it as "the Direct Way to Times Square" and erecting road signs to that effect.
  Daily traffic counts decreased with the first month of the tube's opening, since the opening ceremony had coincided with the holiday travel season at the end of December 1937. In any case, the Lincoln Tunnel had carried less than 10,000 daily vehicles during the December holiday season, compared to the Holland Tunnel's 40,000 daily vehicles, since the Holland Tunnel contained two 2-lane tubes. The Port Authority marketed the new tunnel with the slogan "Don't Mark Time, Make Time, Use the Lincoln Tunnel", which was selected from a set of 3,500 Port Authority employees' proposals. The Lincoln Tunnel saw 1,790,640 vehicles during its first year of operation, but it was not yet profitable: even after all toll revenues were accounted for, the Port Authority had spent a net $953,857 on operating the tunnel. By 1940, the tunnel was carrying 4 million vehicles annually, and by 1942, that count had increased to 4.5 million. A preliminary 1944 estimate put that year's vehicular count at 5.5 million, due to traffic increases during the war.
  At the time of the tube's opening, six interstate bus companies filed plans to run a combined 250 buses per day through the tunnel. Previously, buses from Weehawken had to drive onto ferries to access Manhattan, but in July 1938, the Interstate Commerce Commission granted the bus companies permission to use the tunnel. Buses paid a toll of $1 per direction. By March 1939, there were 600 buses per day using Lincoln Tunnel, running on twelve routes operated by five companies. That month, three more bus companies were given permission to operate an additional combined total of 600 buses. After this permission was granted, the New York City government opposed any further authorizations for bus companies, since they would cause congestion in Manhattan streets. In December 1940, it was announced that a new bus terminal would be built on the Manhattan side of the Lincoln Tunnel, between Eighth Avenue, 41st Street, Ninth Avenue, and 42nd St
caption: Entrance of the tunnel from Weehawken, New Jersey
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