The Lehigh Tunnel is a pair of road

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

s that carries the

Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension Interstate 476 (I-476) is a auxiliary Interstate Highway of I-76 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The highway runs from I-95 near Chester north to I-81 near Scranton, serving as the primary north–south Interstate corridor through ...

(

Interstate 476 Interstate 476 (I-476) is a auxiliary Interstate Highway of I-76 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The highway runs from I-95 near Chester north to I-81 near Scranton, serving as the primary north–south Interstate corridor throu ...

) under Blue Mountain north from

U.S. Route 22 U.S. Route 22 (US 22) is a west–east route and is one of the original United States highways of 1926, running from Cincinnati, Ohio, at US 27, US 42, US 127, and US 52 to Newark, New Jersey, at U.S. Route 1/9 in the Newark Airport Intercha ...

in the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

to the

Scranton Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 U.S. census, Scranton is the largest city in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Wyoming V ...

Wilkes-Barre Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the s ...

area between mileposts 70.7 to 71.5.

Description

Originally a single tunnel that opened to traffic in 1957, it was called the Lehigh Tunnel to avoid confusion with the existing

Blue Mountain Tunnel The Blue Mountain Tunnel is one of two tunnels through Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania, located west of Newburg. It is one of seven tunnels completed for the Pennsylvania Turnpike mainline, and at in length, is the shortest of the four still in ...

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 The New Austrian tunneling method (NATM), also known as the sequential excavation method (SEM) or sprayed concrete lining method (SCL), is a method of modern tunnel design and construction employing sophisticated monitoring to optimize various wa ...

. 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 The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian ...

Accidents

Howard M. Sexton, a 70-year-old truck driver from

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, 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.

References

External links

Pennsylvania Turnpike

Toll tunnels in Pennsylvania Transportation buildings and structures in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Transportation buildings and structures in Carbon County, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission Interstate 76 (Ohio–New Jersey) Road tunnels in Pennsylvania {{US-tunnel-stub