The Widest Bridges In North America

At nearly 400 feet across but only 129 feet long, Lockport’s Big Bridge is so broad that streets and parking lots sit on top of it. Drivers can cross the Erie Canal without realizing they have entered a bridge at all. Other record-setting crossings achieve their tremendous width through parallel roadway decks, movable spans, and immense cable systems.

Bridge width is measured here as the maximum outside-to-outside distance across each complete structure. That measurement includes adjoining decks and intervening gaps when they form one named crossing. Based on published project figures, these bridges are among the widest documented in North America.

Lockport Big Bridge (New York): 399 Feet Wide

The Lockport Big Bridge, completed in 1914, ranks as the widest crossing in this list under the outside-to-outside measurement. Spanning the historic Erie Canal in Lockport, New York, the bridge is hard to recognize as a bridge at all, because it is wider than it is long (measuring just 129 feet in length). Rather than traditional traffic lanes, this massive structure operates as a wide municipal plaza. Its deck carries Main Street, Saxton Street, Cottage Street, sidewalks, and two parking lots over the canal. This is a steel, three-hinged, solid-ribbed deck arch bridge. Its metal arch-girder system transfers the weight of the deck into foundations supported by the limestone of the Niagara Escarpment, eliminating the need for piers within the canal. The resulting open channel provides clearance for canal boats beneath a bridge that is itself one of the Erie Canal corridor's most unusual engineering works.

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, New East Span (California): 258.3 Feet Wide

The Bay Bridge's historic western crossing, completed in 1936, contains two double-decked suspension spans arranged in series and joined at a central anchorage. The separate eastern crossing opened in 2013 and includes a self-anchored suspension span connected to a long skyway viaduct. Guinness World Records recognizes the eastern crossing as the world's widest bridge, with a total width of 258.3 feet across its two roadway decks, bicycle path, and central gap. Traditional suspension bridge designs rely on massive concrete anchorages buried deep in the earth to pull the main cables taut. Deep bay mud and major seismic hazards complicated the use of conventional ground anchorages along the eastern crossing. Engineers instead used a continuous main cable anchored within the deck at the eastern end, carried over the 525-foot tower, and looped around deviation saddles at the western end. The two steel box-girder decks resist the cable's tension through compression. The crossing carries 10 traffic lanes across two parallel decks, with five lanes in each direction, as well as a 15.5-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle path.

Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge (Maryland/Virginia): 249 Feet Wide

Crossing the Potomac River to connect Alexandria, Virginia, with Prince George's County, Maryland, the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, completed in phases between 2006 and 2008, spans an overall width of 249 feet. It consists of two parallel bridge structures with movable bascule sections that allow vessels to pass along the Potomac River. The crossing carries 12 lanes of Interstate 95 and Interstate 495 traffic, along with a multi-use path, and its design allows for the possible addition of transit service. Because a single 249-foot-wide drawbridge would be far too heavy to lift safely, engineers split the bridge into two independent, side-by-side structures. Its movable section contains four side-by-side double-leaf bascule spans, producing eight movable leaves that can operate as a group or independently. Each of its eight leaves weighs roughly 2,000 tons, giving the bascule a total movable mass of about 34 million pounds. The complete movable structure has been described by its designer as the world's largest movable bridge and contains the heaviest movable bridge load in the United States.

Port Mann Bridge (British Columbia, Canada): 213 Feet Wide

Spanning the Fraser River in Metro Vancouver, the new Port Mann Bridge opened in 2012. Upon opening, it briefly held the Guinness World Record as the world's widest bridge before the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge's eastern span claimed the record in 2013. This is a cable-stayed bridge supported by two 535-foot-tall towers and 288 massive stay cables. It carries 10 parallel lanes of traffic (including HOV lanes) with a dedicated path for pedestrians and cyclists. It is also designed to accommodate light, rapid transit lines in the future.

Samuel De Champlain Bridge (Quebec, Canada): 196.85 Feet Wide

Completed in 2019, the Samuel De Champlain Bridge crosses the St. Lawrence River between Montreal's Île-des-Sœurs and Brossard. Its overall width reaches approximately 60 meters, or 196.85 feet, when the three parallel decks and the gaps separating them are included.

The two outside decks carry three traffic lanes each, plus emergency shoulders, on a deck built to accommodate up to eight lanes, while the central deck carries the two tracks of Montreal's Réseau express métropolitain light-rail system. A multi-use path for cyclists and pedestrians runs along the crossing. The bridge's three decks are separate along much of the route but are connected by steel crossbeams across the cable-stayed main span.

A 557-foot pylon supports the 787-foot main span over the St. Lawrence Seaway. The pylon straddles the central transit corridor on twin legs, while piles socketed into bedrock support the cable-stayed section. This three-deck design separates highway and rail traffic while allowing the complete crossing to function as one major transportation corridor.

Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (Massachusetts): 183 Feet Wide

An iconic fixture of the Boston skyline, the Zakim Bridge was completed in 2003 as the crowning architectural jewel of Boston's massive highway reorganization project, the "Big Dig." At 183 feet wide, it stands as one of the widest asymmetrical cable-stayed bridges ever constructed. Why asymmetrical? To navigate intense spatial constraints, including an active subway line running directly beneath it, the bridge was designed with severe asymmetry; the northern and southern towers are built at different heights (323 feet and 295 feet, respectively), and the bridge pairs a steel main span with post-tensioned concrete back spans to balance the uneven weight distribution. And, it's striking, inverted Y-shaped towers were intentionally designed to mimic the nearby historic Bunker Hill Monument. It carries 10 lanes of traffic; uniquely, eight of the lanes run through the inside of the support towers, while two of the lanes are cantilevered on the outside of the eastern cables.

Noteworthy Wide Bridges in North America

The Big Bridge is so wide that its streets and parking lots make it difficult to recognize as a bridge. The eastern crossing of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge holds the Guinness World Record for width, while the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge combines immense width with one of the world's largest movable bridge systems. Port Mann briefly held the world record before the Bay Bridge surpassed it, and the Samuel De Champlain Bridge distributes highway and rail traffic across three adjacent decks.

Other exceptionally wide crossings include New York's Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, whose two parallel cable-stayed structures carry decks 87 and 96 feet wide, with a gap between them reserved for future rail. New Jersey's Governor Alfred E. Driscoll Bridge also deserves mention because its three adjoining structures carry 15 travel lanes and six shoulders, although a reliable overall width comparable with the measurements used in this ranking is not readily available.

These bridges demonstrate how arch girders, suspension cables, movable spans, cable-stayed decks, and parallel structures can accommodate exceptionally wide crossings. Their continued operation is essential to major transportation networks serving cities across North America.