Ole Knutsen Singstad (June 29, 1882 – December 8, 1969) was a Norwegian-American civil engineer best known for his work on underwater vehicular tunnels in New York City.
He returned to New York City and worked at the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, designing tunnels under the Hudson River in 1909–1910, and later spent seven years in charge of work on subways and rail tunnels in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and under the East River.
In 1917–1918, Singstad worked at the Chile Exploration Company, and in 1918–1919, he worked with Barclay, Parsons, and Klapp (now WSP USA, formerly Parsons Brinckerhoff), where he was in charge of designing a rapid-transit system for Philadelphia, and made preliminary designs for a vehicular tunnel under the Delaware River.
The retreating French set explosives in the tunnel when the war began in 1940; the damage was repaired in weeks under German occupation.
[12]: 10 [13] On the other hand, the traffic in the Holland Tunnel consisted mostly of gasoline-driven vehicles, and ventilation was required to evacuate the carbon monoxide emissions, which would otherwise asphyxiate the drivers.
[13] Working with Yale University, the University of Illinois, and the United States Bureau of Mines, Singstad built a test tunnel in the bureau's experimental mine at Bruceton, Pennsylvania, measuring over 400 feet (122 m) long, where cars were lined up with engines running.
Volunteer students were supervised as they breathed the exhaust in order to confirm air flows and tolerable carbon monoxide levels by simulating different traffic conditions, including backups.
[16][18] In October 1921, Singstad concluded that a conventional, longitudinal ventilation system would have to be pressurized to an air flow rate of 27 cubic meters per second (953 cu ft/s) along the tunnel.
[17] On the other hand, the tunnel could be adequately ventilated transversely if the compartment carrying the tube's roadway was placed in between two plenums.
[5] The system was determined to be of sufficiently low cost, relative to the safety benefits, that it was ultimately integrated into the tunnel's design.
Singstad returned to Norway five times in his life: first for his mother's 80th birthday in 1923, to Lensvik in 1930, and again in 1933 while working on the tunnel at the river Schelde.
He missed his mother's 100th birthday in 1943 because of World War II, but he returned in 1953 and again a final time in 1967 at age 85, while he was still active in his consulting firm.
Singstad was elected president of the American Council of Engineering Companies during 1941; he and Søren Anton Thoresen received gold medals and were decorated by King Albert I of Belgium for their work on the Waasland tunnel; a wooden statue has been erected in his honor at Lensvik Samfunnshus;[25] and in 2008, a lecture in his honor was held at the Museum of Modern Art.
[1] At age 48, Singstad received the Royal Norwegian Academy of Science Society, an award normally reserved for much older people.