2013 U.S. Go Congress

1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge - Slender, elegant and graceful, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge stretched like a steel ribbon across Puget Sound in 1940. The third longest suspension span in the world opened on July 1st. Only four months later, the great span’s short life ended in disaster. “Galloping Gertie,” collapsed in a windstorm on November 7,1940. The bridge became famous as “the most dramatic failure in bridge engineering history.” Now, it’s also “one of the world’s largest man-made reefs.” The sunken remains of Galloping Gertie were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 to protect her from salvagers. The 1950 Narrows Bridge After 29 months of construction, a new and much safer Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened on Oct. 14, 1950. The current bridge is the 5th longest suspension bridge in the United States. Located on State Route 16 between Tacoma and Gig Harbor, the bridge is 5,979 feet in length. That’s 40 feet longer than its predecessor, Galloping Gertie. Engineers designed the current bridge to carry 60,000 cars a day. But, now it handles an average of over 90,000 vehicles daily.

The New Tacoma Narrows Bridge - The new Narrows bridge opened to traffic on July 16, 2007, four weeks early and under budget.

The new Narrows Bridge is parallel to and south of the 1950 Narrows Bridge. It carries four 11-foot-wide lanes of eastbound traffic toward Tacoma. The left lane is a high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane, the two center lanes are general purpose lanes open to all traffic, and the right lane is an “add/drop” lane that extends across the bridge to the Jackson Avenue exit. In addition, the bridge has a 10-foot right shoulder for disabled vehicles and a 10-foot barrier-separated bicycle/pedestrian lane. The new Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the first toll facility in western Washington in nearly two decades.