The George Washington Bridge (George Washington Bridge, colloquially GWB, GW Bridge or GW for short) is a suspension bridge over the Hudson River in New York City that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. The road bridge with a total of fourteen lanes is considered the busiest bridge in the world. It is named after George Washington, the first President of the United States. When it opened in 1931, the bridge planned and built by Othmar Ammann had the longest span in the world.
The George Washington Bridge crosses the Hudson River between
steep banks some 100 feet high between Washington Heights on
north Manhattan and Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey on the
mainland side. Fort Washington used to be in the immediate
vicinity at the highest point of Washington Heights and Fort Lee
on the other side.
It is the only bridge between the
island of Manhattan and the mainland west of the Hudson. Only
the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel offer other direct
road connections to New Jersey. Downstream there is only the
Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island,
upriver the Tappan Zee Bridge, about 25 km further north, is the
next bridge over the Hudson River.
The bridge is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The George Washington Bridge is part of Interstate 95 from Florida to
Maine. The I-95 leads as the New Jersey Turnpike in a wide arc from the
west to the bridge, crosses on the other side as a 12-lane
Trans-Manhattan Expressway in a trough Manhattan and crosses the Harlem
River to the Bronx on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, where it becomes
the Cross Bronx Expressway will. The US Highway 1 and the U.S. Route 9
also go over the bridge, which also accommodates local traffic via
various access roads.
Traffic flows in eight lanes on the upper
level and six lanes on the lower level, with trucks only being allowed
to use the upper level. There is a speed limit of 45 mph (72 km/h), but
actual speeds are often lower due to heavy traffic. In 2012, 49,110,921
vehicles crossed the bridge bound for New York, for a total of around
100 million vehicles using the bridge each year.
The bridge is a
toll towards New York, the journey from New York to New Jersey is free.
Under the 2012-2015 toll rate schedule, the toll rate for motorcycles to
cross the bridge was $12 cash, $9.25 with EZ Pass during peak commute
hours and $7.25 off-peak hours and for cars $13 cash and $10.25 EZ-Pass
(peak) and $8.25 EZ-Pass off-peak. There are also discounts for cars
that are occupied by at least three people or have good emission values.
Truck rates vary between $19 (2-axle, nighttime, with EZ Pass) and $90
(6-axle semi-trailer, cash payment) depending on the time of day or
night and number of axles.
Pedestrians and cyclists
Pedestrians and cyclists can cross the bridge free of charge. They share
the path on the north side, which is open from 6 a.m. to midnight. This
path on the north side, previously closed for many years, was opened in
February 2023. As part of repair work on the bridge, it was widened in
the area of the pylons and other bottlenecks and had been given new,
barrier-free access routes in accordance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act. Following the opening of this trail, the trail on the
south side was closed for work scheduled to continue through 2027. The
Port Authority then intends to direct pedestrian traffic there and cycle
traffic on the north side.
Public transport
The Port
Authority's George Washington Bridge Bus Station is located in Manhattan
at the bridge ramp above Interstate 95 and connects to the upper lanes
of the bridge. The bus station primarily serves commuters from the
region, but is also served by long-distance bus services. Bus routes
from New Jersey Transit and private companies such as Coach USA connect
New Jersey and upstate New York west of the Hudson River to the city's
mass transit network. MTA Regional Bus Operations bus lines stop on the
lower level or outside the bus station on surrounding streets, as do
private shared taxis (Jitneys). There are transfers to Line 1 at the
181st Street Subway Station and, through a pedestrian tunnel, to Line A
at the 175th Street Subway Station.
Designed by Pier Luigi Nervi
in the 1960s and refurbished by the Port Authority in the 2010s, the bus
station serves a similar function between New Jersey and New York, but
is not to be confused with the larger Port Authority Bus Terminal in
Midtown Manhattan served by buses through the Lincoln Tunnel.
The George Washington Bridge was built according to the plans and
under the direction of Othmar Ammann, officially opened on October 24,
1931 and opened to traffic on October 25.
Its total length is
1451 m (4760 ft), measured from one suspension cable anchorage to the
other. Because the bridge connects areas above the high bluffs of the
Hudson River, long access ramps were not required and the bridge's
roadway could be kept relatively flat. The short spans between the banks
and the pylons (192 m for the New York side and 186 m for the New Jersey
side) explain that the suspension cables outside the pylons drop
unusually steeply to their anchorages. The bridge has a clear height
above mean high water of the Hudson River of 64.6 m (212 ft).
The
span is 1067 m (3500 ft), which was a new world record at the time of
its opening and far exceeded the previous longest span of the Ambassador
Bridge (564 m). In 1937 it was replaced by the Golden Gate Bridge with a
span of 1280 m.
Its two pylons consist of a plain-looking steel
framework construction. At 184 m (604 ft) high, 64 m wide and 17 m
thick, they are still unique at these dimensions. Its pillars are
connected in the upper third above the roadway by trusses and arches to
form portals, the opening of which corresponds to the width of the
roadway girder. The pillars are also connected and reinforced by round
arches under the roadway girder. The pylon on the New York side is
directly on the bank, the pylon on the other side is in the water just
before the bank. The pylons were originally supposed to be covered with
granite or prestressed concrete slabs, but this was not done because of
the sharp increase in construction costs as a result of the global
economic crisis.[2] The steel girder construction was nevertheless
described in the professional world as elegant and fascinating and the
bridge thus became a forerunner of the modern age.
The roadway
beam is 36 m (119 ft) wide. The eight-lane roadway laid out in the
middle of the upper level is 27.4 m wide. The difference of around 4.3 m
on both sides is due to the space required for the suspension cables.
The bridge has four suspension cables, two on each side of the
roadway. The carrying ropes are parallel wire ropes produced on the
bridge using the air-jet spinning process. Each of the ropes consists of
26,474 individual wires. 434 wires were each combined into 61 strands,
which were arranged in a hexagonal profile and formed into round, almost
91 cm thick suspension cables by hydraulic presses and then coated to
prevent corrosion. The suspension cables are on the pylons in 162 ton
(180 tn.sh.) heavy cable saddles, which were originally arranged openly
on the pylon tops, but were covered after two years. The suspension
cables are anchored directly into the rock on the New Jersey side, while
on the New York side they are anchored in large concrete anchor blocks.
The George Washington Bridge was designated a National Historic
Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in
1981.
On the holidays of Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day,
Independence Day, Labor Day, Washington's Birthday, Columbus Day, Flag
Day and Veterans Day, the world's largest freely waving American flag
(30 m × 20 m, 215 kg) hoisted.
North of the bridge on the New
Jersey side are the Palisades, a forested bluff. Building is prohibited
for 15 miles of the strip visible from the Hudson. This was ordered by
the owner John D. Rockefeller II, who wanted to protect the view from
the museum "The Cloisters" in New York. Rockefeller bought the museum
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1925.
Planning
Since the late 19th century there have been various
proposals for bridging the Hudson River, including various designs by
Gustav Lindenthal, who wanted to connect midtown Manhattan and New
Jersey with a road and rail bridge that would have been significantly
larger than the current bridge, but was not carried out due to lack of
funds. Othmar Amman worked on the design as an employee of Lindenthal,
but soon developed his own ideas.
After his separation from
Lindenthal, Ammann proposed a road-only bridge farther north at Fort
Lee, where the cost of the land acquisition required was significantly
lower and the Hudson was narrower. Initially, to further reduce costs,
it was intended to have only one level for six lanes and two wide
sidewalks, but designed so that two lanes could later be added and a
second level added for suburban motor vehicles and trains. This allowed
him to propose a bridge that would cost significantly less and be
politically easier to implement than the bridges offered by Lindenthal
and other competitors.
Ammann's ideas were accepted; the newly
formed Port of New York Authority decided in 1925 to build the bridge
and hire Othmar Amman as chief engineer for the design and construction
of the bridge. Cass Gilbert was commissioned to provide architectural
advice. The planning of the cladding of the pylons with granite slabs
goes back to him.
Ammann's final design was revolutionary in many
respects: the span of the bridge was almost twice that of the longest
bridge built up to that point, and the deck girder had no large trusses
for reinforcement. According to the deflection theory, first applied to
large suspension bridges by Leon S. Moisseiff on the Manhattan Bridge,
the weight of the suspension cables and bridge deck would neutralize
much of the lateral wind pressure; a low wind resistance of the flat
roadway support is important. Ammann, who had studied this theory
intensively and was also advised by Moisseiff, was convinced that the
four suspension cables, the great width of the bridge deck and their
extraordinarily high weight due to the span were sufficient to withstand
even heavy storms. Added to this was the rigidity of the wide and thick
pylons and the short outer bridge spans with the suspension cables that
fell steeply there.
Groundbreaking for the construction of the Hudson River Bridge, as it
was originally called, occurred on September 21, 1927. After the pylons
and anchors were installed, the wires supplied by John A. Roebling and
Sons went from 300 workers to four in 209 workdays Support ropes spun to
which the hanging ropes were attached. The suspension of the sections of
the bridge deck started at the pylons, so that the last section over the
middle of the river closed off the roadway. In 1930 the Port Authority
decided to name the bridge the George Washington Memorial Bridge; later
this was simplified to the current name.
The bridge was
ceremoniously opened on October 24, 1931 by Governors Franklin D.
Roosevelt, New York, and Morgan F. Larson, New Jersey - eight months
ahead of schedule and well under the budgeted limit.
Even after
the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was a little shorter
but with only two lanes and significantly lighter and narrower with only
two lanes, in November 1940, Othmar Ammann was firmly convinced that his
bridge was stable enough to withstand the dynamic wind forces, which had
not been properly understood up to that point . Practice confirmed his
view, the bridge showed hardly any vibrations.
Various expansion options with tram or subway tracks on a second,
lower level that were planned when the bridge was planned were not used.
The main line of the Independent Subway, the IND Eighth Avenue Line, was
planned and built at the same time as the bridge was being built.
Underground sidings north of the 168th Street subway station terminate
at the trough wall of the Trans-Manhattan Expressway and could have been
routed onto the bridge as mainline tracks.
In 1946, as originally
planned, the roadway was widened from six to eight lanes. From 1959 to
1962, at the instigation of Robert Moses, the second level, also planned
from the beginning, was added below the original one, while traffic
continued unchanged on the upper eight lanes. As a result, the bridge
was inevitably given a roadway girder that consisted of a high truss
construction, so that its rigidity has since been unquestioned.
Between 1977 and 1978 the old upper level concrete roadway was replaced
with an orthotropic slab. The prefabricated 3.35 m × 18.30 m (11 ft × 60
ft) elements, which already had the road surface, were installed
overnight. In this way, commuter traffic could flow unhindered again the
next morning. This was also one of the first uses of an orthotropic slab
to reinforce a larger suspension bridge.
Two of the three lanes that direct local traffic from Fort Lee to the
toll plaza on the upper deck of the bridge were closed by Port Authority
police in September 2013. This unannounced closure, declared as a
traffic study, created rush hour congestion during the first work week
after the summer vacation and impacted Fort Lee's traffic.
The
closure came at the instigation of senior Port Authority officials and
on the staff of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. In 2016, three suspects
in this connection were convicted by a federal court on multiple counts,
including conspiracy to commit a crime. Parts of the judgment were
overturned by the Supreme Court in 2020 due to unprovable personal gain.