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General Information

Completion: 1 April 1957
Status: in use

Project Type

Structure: Tunnel
Function / usage: Road tunnel

Location

Location: , ,
, ,
Address: Interstate I-476
Next to: Lehigh Tunnel (1991)
Coordinates: 40° 46' 25.32" N    75° 38' 58.80" W
Coordinates: 40° 47' 6.50" N    75° 39' 19.50" W
Show coordinates on a map

Technical Information

Dimensions

tunnel length 1 360 m

Chronology

1 April 1957

Opened to traffic as part of Pennsylvania Turnpike's Northeast Extension.

Excerpt from Wikipedia

The Lehigh Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels that carries the Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension (Interstate 476) under Kittatinny Mountain north from Interstate 78 to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area between mileposts 70.7 to 71.5. Originally a single tunnel that opened to traffic in 1957, it was called the Lehigh Tunnel to avoid confusion with the existing Kittatinny Mountain Tunnel on the mainline. The tunnel was. "twinned" in 1991 to allow two lanes of traffic in each direction. It has an unusual appearance, as the original (northbound) tunnel is rectangular, as it used the older dig-and-blast technique, while the new tube is oval, having been constructed using the New Austrian Tunnelling method.

From 1980 to 1996, the Northeast Extension was designated as Pennsylvania Route 9, as opposing traffic faced each other in the single tube prior to the opening of the current southbound tube, and therefore did not qualify for Interstate highway status, which was granted five years after the completion of the southbound tube.

The Lehigh Tunnel crosses the border between Lehigh County and Carbon County. It is the only road tunnel crossed by the Appalachian Trail.

Howard M. Sexton, a 70-year-old truck driver from New Jersey, was killed in the southbound Lehigh Tunnel on February 21, 2018, when an electrical conduit broke free from the tunnel's ceiling and fell through the windshield of his truck, striking him in the head. In a preliminary report issued on May 1, 2018, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that a 10-foot-long section of conduit fell into the path of Sexton's truck after the steel support system for the conduits, which were suspended from the apex of the tunnel arch directly over the travel lanes, failed. The tunnel had last been inspected in 2016, at which time an inspector found evidence of corrosion on several of the steel support straps.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Lehigh Tunnel" and modified on 23 July 2019 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

Participants

Currently there is no information available about persons or companies having participated in this project.

Relevant Web Sites

  • About this
    data sheet
  • Structure-ID
    20023787
  • Published on:
    16/10/2006
  • Last updated on:
    28/05/2021
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