Queens–Midtown Tunnel

The Queens–Midtown Tunnel (often called the Midtown Tunnel) is a roadway tunnel under the East River in New York City. It connects the boroughs of Queens and Manhattan. The tunnel has two tubes, and each tube has two lanes for cars. The west end of the tunnel is on the East Side of Midtown Manhattan, and the east end is in Long Island City in Queens.

The tunnel was first planned in 1921. Construction began in 1936, and it was finished in 1940. Interstate 495 runs through the whole tunnel. Today, the tunnel is owned by New York City and operated by MTA Bridges and Tunnels, a part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Many express buses use the tunnel to travel between Queens and Manhattan.

Description

The Queens–Midtown Tunnel has two tubes, each with two traffic lanes. One tube usually carries traffic eastbound to Queens, and the other carries traffic westbound to Manhattan. During busy morning hours, one lane in the eastbound tube is used for high-occupancy vehicles.

The tunnel's eastern end is in Long Island City, where Interstate 495 enters the tunnel. The tubes travel under the East River and curve south under First Avenue in Manhattan before ending in Midtown Manhattan. Both tubes have ventilation buildings on each side of the river, designed in the Art Deco style. These buildings help keep the air clean inside the tunnel.

History

Initial proposal

The Queens–Midtown Tunnel was first suggested in 1921 by Manhattan's borough president, Julius Miller. The idea came up again in 1926 and was called both the Triborough Tunnel and the 38th Street Tunnel. Miller and Queens' borough president, Maurice E. Connolly, wanted to build a $58 million tunnel to connect Midtown Manhattan to Long Island City in Queens and to Greenpoint in Brooklyn. At that time, bridges across the East River were often crowded. Brooklyn’s borough president, James J. Byrne, was unhappy because he wasn’t asked about the plan. Later that year, Mayor James J. Walker created a group to study traffic on New York City’s bridges and tunnels. Some community groups thought it wasn’t enough to just add more space to existing bridges like the Queensboro Bridge because there were no roads connecting Long Island to Midtown Manhattan. The city decided not to support the Triborough Tunnel right away.

In April 1927, community groups formed a committee to support the 38th Street Tunnel. They said it would help traffic from midtown Manhattan, which had to use other crossings far north or south. That June, the city agreed to spend $100,000 to find sites and test drilling. After this, more groups supported the tunnel and wanted it built quickly. By February 1929, thirty-five groups backed the tunnel.

At the same time, groups suggested a 4.3-mile system of tunnels under Manhattan, linking Queens to Weehawken, New Jersey. They wanted the Queens–Midtown Tunnel to connect with the Midtown Hudson (Lincoln) Tunnel, crossing the Hudson River to New Jersey. The plan started at 10th Avenue in Manhattan, went under the city streets and the East River, and ended near Borden Avenue in Long Island City. The tunnel would have exits in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and Third Avenue in Manhattan. The Fifth Avenue Association suggested creating a bridge-and-tunnel authority to fund and manage the construction, similar to the Port of New York Authority, which was building Hudson River crossings.

Approval

The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York supported a Queens–Manhattan crossing in January 1929, saying it could be a bridge or a tunnel. The city studied building the Triborough Tunnel and the Triborough Bridge between Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx. The study suggested building roads and expressways, including a major highway from Long Island to the Manhattan-Queens tunnel. The Queens Planning Commission also recommended building the Triborough Tunnel. An official plan for the Triborough Tunnel was released in June. It included an $86 million system of roads, with the Manhattan tunnel and a tunnel branch from Brooklyn. The New York City Board of Estimate approved using tolls for the tunnel to help pay for it and earn money for the city. Officials thought construction could start by the end of that year.

In July 1929, the city faced legal problems. Walker’s announcement allowed construction but gave the wrong city agency the job. Community groups asked the New York City Board of Estimate to change the laws so the tunnel could be approved. The Board of Estimate agreed to spend $5 million on studies and early construction for the Manhattan–Queens tunnel and another tunnel under the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island. After this, the New York City Board of Transportation quickly submitted plans for the Triborough Tunnel’s construction.

In January 1930, after the Midtown Hudson Tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey was approved, engineers studied connecting it to the Triborough Tunnel. Around this time, engineers changed the Triborough Tunnel’s route in Queens, moving the Brooklyn branch from 11th to 21st Street. Test drilling was done by June 1930. Three months later, the Board of Transportation changed the plans on the Manhattan side. The new plans included a “mixing plaza” at Second Avenue in Manhattan, where tubes from Queens and Manhattan’s west side would rise to the surface. The eastbound and westbound tubes would run under 37th and 38th Streets because the streets were too narrow for both tubes together. Supporters of the Triborough Tunnel didn’t like the surface exit plazas, suggesting a highway overpass instead.

In December 1930, the United States Department of War approved building the Triborough Tunnel because it wouldn’t block ships during wars. But the Board of Transportation delayed construction for several months due to public concerns about the highway section. In June 1931, the Board of Transportation sent a detailed plan for the Triborough Tunnel to the Board of Estimate. The project was now expected to cost $93.6 million, including $23.5 million for the part under the East River and in Queens. That October, the Board of Estimate agreed to spend $200,000 on planning. Construction was expected to start in March 1932, with the East River part finished by 1936. By July 1932, no contracts were awarded due to lack of money, and the tunnel’s cost rose to $80 million. As the Midtown Tunnel plan struggled, the Board of Estimate approved other projects that hadn’t been studied as much.

Plans revived

In May 1935, Governor Herbert H. Lehman signed a bill to create the Queens–Midtown Tunnel Authority to build the tunnel. Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia later appointed three businessmen to lead the agency. La Guardia supported building the tunnel right away because he thought it would help traffic to the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Queens. The Queens–Midtown Tunnel Authority asked for a federal loan and grant totaling $58.4 million from the Public Works Administration (PWA) that September. Two months later, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) offered to lend $47.1 million if the PWA provided the remaining $11.3 million. PWA chairman Harold L. Ickes said his agency had $32.7 million ready for the tunnel. The $58.4 million cost was just for the 3,790-foot section under the river, the 1,600-foot Queens approach, and the 2,400-foot Manhattan approach east of Second Avenue. The Brooklyn branch was canceled for now because it couldn’t be funded separately, but the crosstown highway would be part of a later project. Community groups kept asking for the Brooklyn branch even after construction began.

The federal government tentatively agreed to spend $58.3 million for the tunnel’s construction in January 1936. This included the RFC loan and PWA grant, to be paid back with tolls and bonds. The same month, the New York State Legislature created the New York City Tunnel Authority to build the Queens–Midtown and Brooklyn–Battery Tunnels. Work could start as soon as the city got the federal money. The Tunnel Authority accepted the grant in March 1936, and the Queens–Midtown Tunnel became the largest public works project in the United States not managed by a federal agency.

In April 1936, Manhattan’s borough president, Samuel Levy, suggested building a six-lane bridge instead, which would save about $36 million. Brooklyn’s borough president, Raymond V. Ingersoll, and State Senator Thomas C. Desmond supported this. Robert Moses, chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority (TBA), also supported a bridge for another reason: he didn’t like the Tunnel Authority because he wasn’t chosen to run it. Moses’s group would be the only one allowed to build and run a toll bridge inside New York City, and the approved federal funding for the tunnel would be canceled if the project was delayed too long. Tunnel Authority commissioner William Friedman, Mayor LaGuardia, and the Queens Borough Chamber of Commerce opposed the bridge because the tunnel funding was already secured. Despite the bridge debate, the PWA said to keep planning the tunnel. A bill for the proposed bridge was voted down in the New York State Senate that May.

Construction

The Tunnel Authority approved plans for the Queens–Midtown Tunnel in August 1936, and chief engineer Ole Singstad was in charge of the design. By the end of the month, the first bids for the tunnel were advertised. A celebration for the tunnel was held on the Queens side on October 1, 1936, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt attending. Soon after, the New York City Tunnel Authority gave out the first contracts for construction. Test drilling for the tubes started later that month. These test drills used diamond-tipped tools from boats, drilling down into the riverbed.

After the test drills were done in November 1936, engineers found many challenges for building the tunnel. The path went through solid rock, but there were also areas of dirt under the river that would be easy to dig through. Also, workers digging the Queens–Midtown Tunnel had to be careful not to damage the East River railroad tunnels to the south and the Steinway Tunnel to the north. Of the four shafts being built for the tunnel, only the Queens shaft was finished. The next month, the Tunnel Authority accepted a bid for the Midtown ventilation shaft and was allowed to start building it right away. Construction on the Manhattan ventilation shaft began with a celebration on December 31, 1936, and four months later, the city bought the whole block around the shaft.

The first $500,000 of PWA money was released in January 1937. A 40-foot-deep layer of clay was put at the bottom of the East River, on top of the tunnel’s path, to stop air leaks and keep air pressure inside the tubes. This “blanket” held about 250,000 cubic yards of clay. This was the first time a clay blanket was used on an underwater tunnel, so digging was delayed for four months to put down the clay layer. Officials worried the tunnel might not open before the end of 1940, as originally planned. A contract for digging the tubes was given in June 1937. The project used up to 2,500 workers at a time. Because the work site had very high air pressure, each worker worked two 30-minute shifts per day, with a 6-hour break in a chamber with lower pressure so they wouldn’t get decompression sickness.

On the Queens side, they planned to connect the tunnel to what is now I-495. Officials agreed to build a 2.5-mile link to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, part of a longer highway to LaGuardia Airport. The status of a highway on the Manhattan side, connecting to the Lincoln Tunnel, was still unsure. The Manhattan entrance and exit ramps removed St. Gabriel Church, which was later replaced by the Church of Our Saviour on Park Avenue. By early 1938, costs were rising fast, and only 65% of the contracts were awarded. Tunnel Authority Commissioner Friedman said if costs kept rising, construction might need to stop halfway. By September 1938, three-fourths of the tunnel’s contracts were awarded.

Work on the underwater part of the tubes started in April 1938. Underwater digging was supposed to start earlier, but the geology delayed it. When underwater digging began, La Guardia opened valves to let compressed air into the tubes, and workers started digging under the river from each end. The pressurized air let workers dig up to six hours per day in two 3-hour shifts, but as they got closer to the middle of the river, the pressure increased, and workers dug fewer hours per day. Builders also sent air along the top of the tunnel to stop water from leaking in. Later, workers wore oxygen masks connected to a machine giving pure oxygen. Even with these safety steps, about 300 cases of decompression sickness were reported during construction.

The project was about 25% done by September 1938. Workers mainly dug underwater using tunnelling shields that moved forward from each end of each tube, but used dynamite to blast through thick rock. After that, steel rings, each made of 14 sections weighing up to 3,500 pounds, were placed inside the tunnel. In March 1939, the PWA said the tunnel wouldn’t be ready until summer 1941, eight months later than planned, because of geological problems. Around the same time, Robert Moses said the Queens–Midtown Tunnel wouldn’t make money, during an argument about building the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel. This led the New York State Legislature to investigate the Queens–Midtown Tunnel’s costs. Moses’s comment also came from his anger toward the Tunnel Authority. Work moved quickly after this, and the tunnel was 60% complete by May 1939. Construction stopped for two weeks in July when workers went on strike because of a disagreement between two unions. By then, the two parts of the tubes were only 850 feet apart. Workers from the Manhattan side didn’t need compressed air anymore because the tubes reached rock. The workers dug faster, and by late September, the project was 45 days ahead of schedule.

The separate parts of both tubes were joined together in a “holing through” celebration in November 1939, with an error margin of less than 0.5 inches. In January 1940, another milestone was reached when the last of 1,622 metal rings were put in the tubes. Fans were being installed in the ventilation buildings, and land at the Queens end was being cleared for the tunnel entrances. By May 1940, only three contracts were left to award, and the tunnel was 90% complete.

Opening and early years

The Queens–Midtown Tunnel was finished on schedule in late 1940. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to drive through it on October 28, 1940. The public could use it starting in mid-November. An ad for the tunnel, in newspapers before it opened, called it “the toll that isn’t a toll” with the slogan “Cross In 3 Minutes, Save In 3 Ways ... Time! Money! Gas!” The president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce said the tunnel would help development in Queens.

The tunnel opened to the public on November 15, 1940, at a celebration on the Queens side. Attendees included the Queens and Manhattan borough presidents; U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner; and New York City Council president Newbold Morris, attending for La Guardia. The tubes had new lighting that helped drivers adjust to sunlight when leaving the tunnel. One hundred and fifty workers were hired and trained to run the tunnel. The first paying customer was Henry Sokovit from Queens.

In a report from August 1939, the New York City Tunnel Authority thought the tunnel would carry 10 million vehicles in its first year and reach 16 million vehicles a year by 1952. But at first, traffic was lower than expected because drivers could use East River bridges for free. The tunnel had one million vehicles by February 1941, three months after opening. This was worse because of gasoline rationing during World War II, which reduced trips. The tunnel was closed at night starting in February 1943, but reopened 24 hours a day in July 1944 due to more nighttime traffic. By 1946, the tunnel was losing $5.8 million. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which took over from the New York City Tunnel Authority, saw a 72% increase in traffic in the first half of 1946 compared to the same time in 1945. The tunnel made its first profit in 1949, earning $659,505. As an experiment to reduce traffic jams, in December 1955, one eastbound lane started carrying westbound traffic during morning rush hours.

In 1950, the TBTA and several airlines agreed to build the East Side Airlines Terminal at First Avenue between 37th and 38th Streets, on the Manhattan side of the tunnel. When it opened in 1953, it had bus routes to LaGuardia or John F. Kennedy International Airports. The terminal operated until 1984 and was sold in 1985. The site is now The Corinthian, an apartment building.

Mid-Manhattan Expressway and third tube plan

A connector between the Queens–Midtown and Lincoln Tunnels was suggested again in 1950 but dropped for lack of support. Nine years later, Robert Moses proposed adding a third tube to the Queens–Midtown Tunnel to reduce congestion, with a possible extension to Brooklyn. The tube would be south of the two existing tubes. In January 1965, Moses said money was approved for a study of the third tube, estimated to cost $120 million. This was part of his plan to build a Mid-Manhattan expressway over 30th Street. The third tube would connect to the unbuilt Bushwick Expressway, which would run across northeastern Brooklyn and southwestern Queens to the Nassau Expressway.

In December 1965, Moses canceled the Mid-Manhattan Expressway due to city government opposition. He said the TBTA would build a third tube for the Queens–Midtown Tunnel because it didn’t need city approval, and it could be finished four-and-a-half years after construction started. Moses said after the third tube, two tubes would be for westbound and eastbound traffic only, while the center tube would be a reversible-flow roadway. The Queens Chamber of Commerce supported the third-tube project, but city officials opposed it. Moses ignored the city’s opposition and in March 1966, asked for bids to test drill for the third tube. The TBTA kept studying the third tube through 1967, but it was never built.

Later years

In 1971, one lane of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel’s eastbound tube was changed to a westbound high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) and bus lane during morning rush hour. The reversible tunnel lane connected to an HOV/bus lane along I-495, starting 2 miles east of the tunnel’s Queens end.

Every spring from 1981 to 2016, the tunnel was closed for a few hours at night for the annual “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Animal Walk”. Several nights before the circus opened at Madison Square Garden, the elephants marched into Manhattan down 34th Street to the arena. The animals used to be moved into the city on the West Side railroad line, but the southern part, the High Line viaduct, closed in 1981 during Javits Center construction. The first “Animal Walk” through the Queens–Midtown Tunnel remembered a similar event ten years earlier, when animals walked through the Lincoln Tunnel due to a railroad strike. The walk became a tradition, with crowds of several hundred people gathering at the Queens end to see the march in the middle of the night. It was controversial and protested by groups who thought the animals were treated inhumanely. When the circus stopped using elephants in 2016, the elephant walk ended.

In 1995, under an agreement with Verizon Wireless, the Queens–Midtown Tunnel got cellular service. The roads were originally paved with bricks but were replaced with asphalt in 1995. Two years later, the TBTA’s successor, MTA Bridges and Tunnels, planned to renovate the tunnel’s roof. The $132 million project, finished in May 2001, replaced the roof with 930 concrete slabs hanging from brackets glued to the tunnel shell. The major $97 million contract faced questions because the contractor gave money to Governor George Pataki’s political party before getting the contract. A state judge decided the MTA didn’t break any laws or ethical rules when awarding the contract to Pataki’s donor instead of another competitor. The MTA started replacing the 23 fans in the tunnel’s ventilation buildings in 2004, and the project was finished in 2008.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, all traffic to Manhattan through the tunnel had a high-occupancy vehicle restriction for a short time. This restriction was removed in April 2002.

In 2017–2018, the walls in the Queens–Midtown and Brooklyn–Battery Tunnels were redone because of damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The new white walls have gold-and-blue stripes, New York’s official state colors. There was debate about re-tiling the tunnels, which cost $30 million combined, because of the ongoing transit problems at the time.

On September 4, 2024, a contractor doing surveys for the East River Greenway accidentally drilled through the roof of one tube, causing water to leak into the tunnel and forcing it to close for emergency repairs. It reopened several hours later after a temporary fix. Contractors later permanently fixed the leak by putting a steel cap over the plug.

Bus routes

The Queens–Midtown Tunnel is used by 21 express bus routes. Sixteen of these routes travel westbound through the tunnel only. The routes include the BM5, QM1, QM2, QM4, QM5, QM6, QM7, QM8, QM10, QM11, QM12, QM15, QM16, QM17, QM18, QM24 and QM25. These are operated by the MTA Bus Company. Additional routes QM63, QM64, and QM68, operated by MTA New York City Transit, also use the tunnel.

Most of these buses use the Queensboro Bridge for travel in the opposite direction, except for the BM5, QM7, QM8, QM8 Super Express (SX), QM11, QM25, QM2 SX, QM5 SX, and QM20 SX.

Tolls

As of January 4, 2026, drivers pay different amounts depending on their vehicle and payment method. Cars pay $12.03 by mail or with out-of-state E-ZPass, while motorcycles pay $5.06. E-ZPass users with special transponders pay less.

Since January 10, 2017, drivers no longer stop to pay cash. Instead, cameras and E-ZPass readers take the toll automatically. Vehicles without E-ZPass get a bill mailed to them.

Since January 2025, drivers entering Manhattan through the tunnel also pay a second toll as part of the city’s congestion pricing plan. This charge depends on the time of day and vehicle type, but it is only charged once each day. Drivers using the tunnel to enter the city get a credit toward this charge and pay a lower toll at night.

.92–5.75.00.25.50.750.51–10.870.70–11.161.29–11.960.170.75–12.081.191.19–11.822.032.03