00:00This bridge makes a million dollars per day, but you can't see why from here.
00:03The Hudson was too wide for New York to build an ordinary bridge across, so engineers had
00:07to cross it with one giant leap, and that meant a radical new design.
00:10The George Washington Bridge had to be lighter, thinner, and more flexible, but when it opened,
00:15people were scared to even look at it.
00:16The towers were enormous, the road looked too thin, and the stone covering had been
00:20cut to save money, leaving a steel skeleton that didn't scream, safe bridge, but looks
00:25can be deceiving.
00:25Cars paid 50 cents to cross, and within a few years, the bridge was making around
00:30$10,000 a day, but still, that wasn't enough.
00:32So two empty lanes in the middle were paved, turning six lanes into eight roads, but that
00:37only bought time.
00:38Soon, the top of the bridge was full, and if they wanted more of that sweet, sweet toll
00:42money, they were going to need more roads.
00:43But the only place left to build was underneath the bridge, and building it was a nightmare.
00:47Traffic was still moving above them, and the new road couldn't just be bolted into place,
00:51because the old bridge didn't sit still.
00:53It rises and falls with the temperature, and a rigid lower deck would tear at its own
00:58supports.
00:58So engineers gave it huge expansion fingers, and steel pins that let the frame swivel.
01:03So when the old bridge moved, the new road moved with it.
01:06And it was a huge success.
01:07The lower deck added six more lanes, and capacity jumped by 75%.
01:10So by 1970, the extra traffic was bringing in another $30,000 a day.
01:15But the biggest boost was not from adding lanes, it was raising the price of every toll.
01:18Cars once paid 50 cents to cross, which is about $11 today.
01:22But the price has more than doubled, turning the GWB into a million-dollar-a-day machine.
01:26Give the future funding every 10 yearsife.
01:26The keyakin' mon trabal sack seems to be heightened, because it skalbeds hard enough.
01:26And if you had it again, at least it took that.
01:26You
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