Goethals Bridge (1928–2017)

Goethals Bridge
The Goethals Bridge, seen from Staten Island
Coordinates	40°38′09″N 74°11′49″W / 40.6358°N 74.1969°W / 40.6358; -74.1969
Carries	4 lanes of I-278
Crosses	Arthur Kill
Locale	Elizabeth, New Jersey and Howland Hook, Staten Island, New York City
Maintained by	Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Characteristics
Design	Cantilever bridge
Total length	7,109 ft (2,167 m)[1]
Width	62 ft (19 m)[1]
Longest span	672 ft (205 m)[1]
Clearance above	14 ft (4.3 m)
Clearance below	140 ft (43 m)[1]
History
Opened	June 29, 1928; 96 years ago (1928-06-29)
Closed	June 9, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-06-09)
Statistics
Daily traffic	77,092 (2008)[2]
Toll	(eastbound) Cars $8.00 Cash, $8.00 peak with (E-ZPass), $6.00 off-peak with (E-ZPass)
Location

The original Goethals Bridge (/ˈɡɒθəlz/) connected Elizabeth, New Jersey to Staten Island, New York, near the Howland Hook Marine Terminal, Staten Island, New York over the Arthur Kill.^[3] In 2017, it was replaced by the New Goethals Bridge and later demolished.

A steel truss cantilever design by John Alexander Low Waddell, who also designed the Outerbridge Crossing. The bridge's 672 ft (205 m) long central span, 7,109 feet (2,168 m) long in total, 62 feet (19 m) wide, had a clearance of 135 feet (41.1 m) and carried four lanes for traffic.^[3] The Port Authority had $3 million of state money and raised $14 million in bonds to build the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing; the Goethals bridge construction began on September 1, 1925 and cost $7.2 million. It and the Outerbridge Crossing opened on June 29, 1928.^[4] The Goethals Bridge replaced three ferries and is the immediate neighbor of the Arthur Kill Rail Bridge. Its unusually high^[3] mid-span height was a requirement of the New Jersey ports.

The span was one of the first structures built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. On the New Jersey side it was located 2 exits south of the terminus for the New Jersey Turnpike-Newark Bay Extension. The bridge had been grandfathered into Interstate 278, and named for Major General George Washington Goethals, who supervised construction of the Panama Canal and was the first consulting engineer of the Port Authority.^[5]

Connecting onto the New Jersey Turnpike, it has been one of the main routes for traffic between there and Brooklyn via the Staten Island Expressway and the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. Until the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge was completed in 1964 the Goethals Bridge never turned a profit. The same happened to the Outerbridge Crossing. The total traffic in 2002 was 15.68 million vehicles.

• Goethals Bridge, PANYNJ
• Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. NY-305, "Goethals Bridge"
• Goethals Bridge at Structurae