to the sides of the street. Triest Construction Company was awarded the next segment, which was between Queen Street and the intersection of Northern Boulevard and 37th Street. The following section was awarded to J.F. Cogan Company, which was required to build the section between the intersection of Steinway Street and Broadway and the intersection of 53rd Street and Northern Boulevard. The remainder of the line was called Route 108, and it was divided into six sections. The first section, between 53rd Street and Pettit Place via Broadway went to Atwell-Gustin-Morris Company, while the section between along Broadway and Queens Boulevard from Pettit Place to 55th Avenue went to George H. Flynn Company. The sections from 55th Avenue to 64th Road and from 64th Road to 71st Road went to Arthur A. Johnson. The final two sections were from 71st Road to Union Turnpike, and from 137th Street (now the Van Wyck Expressway) to Hillside Avenue. The two tubes of the 53rd Street Tunnel under the East River began construction in spring 1927, and were fully excavated between Queens and Manhattan in January 1929, with a ventilation shaft built on Welfare Island (today's Roosevelt Island). On October 4, 1928, the Board of Estimate approved the construction of the Queens Boulevard Line. Construction on the line began in December 1928, and the whole line cost $58 million. During the line's construction, several intersections of Queens Boulevard with major roads were grade separated, in a similar manner to Grand Concourse in the Bronx during the building of the IND Concourse Line around that same time. At adjacent intersections with Woodhaven Boulevard and Horace Harding Boulevard (now the Long Island Expressway) in Elmhurst, Queens Boulevard's main road was depressed into underpasses. In Kew Gardens, Union Turnpike and the Interboro Parkway (now the Jackie Robinson Parkway) were depressed below Queens Boulevard at the level of the Union Turnpike station's mezzanine. From the mezzanine at Union Turnpike, an entrance was built from the Interboro Parkway, allowing passengers from buses and automobiles to be dropped off here instead of from Queens Boulevard. The subway from Long Island City to Roosevelt Avenue and 74th Street was completed by April 1932. During the 1920s and 1930s, in conjunction with the subway construction project, Queens Boulevard was widened with up to twelve lanes in some places, and a right-of-way of in width was created. With the widening, Queens Boulevard