| Bridge Name: | Goethals Bridge |
| Carries: | 4 lanes of I-278 |
| Crosses: | Arthur Kill |
| Locale: | Elizabeth, New Jersey and Howland Hook, Staten Island, New York City |
| Maint: | Port Authority of New York and New Jersey |
| Design: | Cantilever bridge |
| Mainspan: | 672feet[1] |
| Length: | 7109feet |
| Width: | 62feet |
| Clearance: | 14feet |
| Below: | 140feet |
| Traffic: | 77,092 (2008)[2] |
| Toll: | (eastbound) Cars $8.00 Cash, $8.00 peak with (E-ZPass), $6.00 off-peak with (E-ZPass) |
The original Goethals Bridge 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.