George Washington Bridge Traffic Webcam

The George Washington Bridge in New York is one of those feats of engineering that make the mind boggle. Just trying to imagine designing something of that size and complexity is enough to give the average person a migraine. And trying to get from one side of the bridge to the other during peak traffic hours can have the same effect. Having to cross it on a daily basis if you need to get to work is enough to make anyone’s purse strings sob with the financial stress of paying the none-to-cheap toll fees.

While this steel monstrosity that stretches across the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan isn’t the only bridge in the country named after the first president, it is the only one that can lay claim to being the bridge most used by motor vehicles in the world. The bridge first opened in 1927 so is not far off celebrating its centennial year. During the years since it opened for use, the bridge’s traffic lanes have been increased to fourteen. Those lanes carry on average three-hundred thousand vehicles daily which amounts to over a hundred-million annually.

At the price charged to get over it, building and maintaining bridges of this dimension is undoubtedly a profitable business. The good news is – you only pay a toll fee if you’re driving into New York and not if you’re heading from New York to New Jersey. Toll-free or not, it can still take anywhere up to fifteen minutes to get over the one-thousand, four-hundred and fifty metre long structure. You don’t need to have a degree in mathematics to calculate that that speed in kilometres per hour equals – snail pace. But still, the views from both the upper and lower decks, especially at dusk, are something which should be appreciated unrushed which you can do quite easily when you’re stuck in slow moving traffic.