Restoring the George: 592 Suspender Ropes and Four Main Cables

The George Washington Bridge opened in 1931 and has never had its suspender ropes replaced. All 592 of them are coming out.

Restoring the George is an eleven-project, $2 billion program run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to rehabilitate the busiest vehicular bridge in the world. The work goes well past a deck job. Crews are swapping every original suspender rope, stripping and rewrapping the four main cables, and installing dehumidification systems inside them to slow corrosion of the 26,474 compacted steel wires bundled into each one.

Project Scope

The eleven packages cover suspender rope replacement, main cable rehabilitation and dehumidification, a rebuilt south sidewalk with an accessible entry plaza and viewing platform, and associated steel and approach work. Skanska holds the largest rehabilitation contract. El Sol Contracting, Skanska Koch, Ahern Painting Contractors and GCCOM Construction are all working packages under the program.

The rope replacement is the piece with the tightest sequencing. Each rope carries deck load into the main cable, so they come out and go back a few at a time while traffic keeps moving above. As of the most recent Port Authority update the overall program is roughly 60 percent complete and the rope work is past 95 percent, with about two dozen ropes left against an end-of-2026 target.

Why It Matters

Cable dehumidification is the part worth watching. Main cables on long-span suspension bridges fail from the inside, and you can’t inspect the interior without unwrapping them. Pumping dry air through the cable is the current best answer, and doing it on a 1931 bridge carrying this much traffic is the reference job other owners will cite.

The Port Authority is also proving out a sequencing model for keeping a bridge fully open through a rehabilitation this deep. That’s the constraint every aging long-span owner in the country is going to run into.

Project Team & Details