The George Washington Bridge: Opening the Lower Deck and Expanding Cross-River Capacity in 1962

The George Washington Bridge crosses the Hudson River between northern Manhattan and Fort Lee, New Jersey. The original deck opened in 1931; the six-lane lower deck opened on 29 August 1962. The Tri-State Transportation Committee's highway status report that year listed the existing eight-lane upper deck and new lower deck separately, identifying different construction stages of the same suspension bridge.

In selecting the site, the Port of New York Authority examined roads, terrain and river navigation on both banks. Its 1928 progress report explained that an alignment between Manhattan's 178th and 179th Streets used high ground on both sides to shorten approaches, while the Palisades cliffs on the New Jersey side could serve an anchoring function. A 3,500-foot main span, about 1,067 metres, kept piers out of the main navigation channel. Location and span thus addressed both land connections and passage on the water.

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New York and New Jersey assigned the project to the interstate Port of New York Authority. Its 1928 report records authorization of US$60 million in bridge bonds, with the first US$20 million sold in December 1926. The states also supplied a combined US$10 million in construction funds, repayable with interest. Planned toll revenue was a source of security for the bonds. These figures describe financing arrangements, not the final construction cost.

The project also depended on a clear division of work. Othmar Ammann was chief bridge engineer, Leon Moisseiff advised on design, Montgomery Case directed Hudson River bridge construction, and architect Cass Gilbert contributed architectural treatment. Teams continually surveyed the banks, bored at tower foundations and consulted geologists on rock conditions. Work on the New Jersey tower foundation began after the contract was awarded in May 1927, so the September groundbreaking ceremony did not mean no construction had occurred beforehand.

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The original report divided the suspension structure into deck, suspenders, main cables, towers and anchorages. Suspenders transmit deck weight to the main cables, towers carry vertical loads to the foundations, and anchorages resist cable tension. During tendering, engineers compared parallel-wire cables with eyebar chains and selected the lower-cost wire-cable option. The chosen arrangement used two main cables on each side, each comprising 61 strands of 434 galvanized steel wires.

Phased expansion was considered from the design stage. Ammann emphasized that opening only the necessary initial capacity reduced early capital and interest burdens, with additions following changes in traffic. The 1928 lower-deck concept still included rapid transit and cannot be equated directly with the eventual six road lanes. After the bridge first opened in 1931, post-war growth in motor traffic intensified congestion on both banks, making a lower deck a specific means of expanding this crossing.

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The Authority's 1958 annual report states the challenge clearly: building six new lanes and approaches beneath an eight-lane crossing already operating at full capacity. In June that year, Bethlehem Steel received a US$13.61 million structural-steel contract involving approximately 14,000 tons of steel. Construction traffic arrangements were developed before the overall schedule, allowing lighting, communications, signs and fire-protection requirements to enter the design.

Transport historian H. Jerome Cranmer describes prefabricated components lifted from river barges, moved into place by lifting equipment on temporary tracks beneath the old bridge, and connected to steel plates reserved in the original structure. Major lifting could thus take place below existing traffic. The lower deck was added without another parallel main span. Construction used the original design's provisions while remaining constrained by the need to maintain daily traffic.

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Opening the lower deck did not mean that the entire regional route was complete the same day. The October 1962 highway sheet already recorded the lower deck as open but still listed parts of the Trans-Manhattan Expressway and the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River as under construction. Such contemporary records show that expanded bridge capacity depended on gradual completion of connecting roads; its usefulness cannot be measured solely by cross-river lane counts.

Approach construction also changed residents' lives. The Authority's 1958 annual report records that 1,695 of 1,824 families in the Manhattan bridgehead acquisition area had relocated and 25 buildings had been demolished. The report assessed resettlement from the managing institution's perspective, but the figures themselves show that increasing transport capacity involved rearranging residential space. Project costs therefore meant more than steel and concrete over the river.

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The Authority's 1963 annual report lists annual vehicle crossings rising from approximately 40.55 million in 1962 to 46.52 million. The lower deck connected with roads across Manhattan and the Bronx, providing a northern route around congested parts of Manhattan. This was a change visible in that year's operating records, not proof that expansion could permanently eliminate congestion.

The associated George Washington Bridge Bus Station opened on 17 January 1963 and served more than twelve million passenger movements in its first year. It consolidated previously dispersed curbside boarding and alighting and connected to the subway by a passageway. New facilities also created operational differences: because parts of the lower level were enclosed, the Authority extended hazardous-goods restrictions to it. The bridge's impact therefore lay both in carrying more vehicles and in new coordination among roads, interchanges and management rules.

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