The GG....

The Golden Gate Bridge suicide net is working

By Andrew Chamings

One year after its long-delayed completion, the $224 million steel-webbed suicide deterrent hanging under the Golden Gate Bridge appears to be working.

Over the past 20 years, there have been, on average, 30 suicides a year on the bridge, peaking in 2013 with 46 fatalities. In 2023, as the net was being constructed, that number fell to 14. In 2024, there were eight suicides, Golden Gate Bridge District spokesperson Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz told SFGATE over email.

“The net is working as intended to save lives and deter people from coming to the Golden Gate Bridge to harm themselves,” Cosulich-Schwartz wrote. A typical year has seen around 200 attempts at suicide on the bridge; in 2024, bridge district staff successfully intervened in 132 attempts.

The news is a welcome success story, decades after the idea of a net was first introduced.

“Who would want to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge?” chief architect of the bridge Joseph Strauss asked reporters in 1937, as his ambitious design was under construction. Just three months after the bridge’s opening that year, Oakland war veteran Harold Wobber leaped to his death while walking the new bridge with a friend, leaving a note for his daughter in his discarded jacket. It would be the first of approximately 2,000 suicides on the bridge. Like many jumpers, Wobber’s body was never found.

Original 1930s designs for the bridge’s walkway called for the railing to be over 5 feet tall, though this was changed in a late design tweak to just 4 feet, providing less of an obstruction to jumpers. Some say this was because Strauss, who stood at just 5 feet tall himself, wanted to be able to see over the side.

As San Francisco’s international orange icon gained a bleak reputation as one of the world’s most popular suicide spots, the idea of a net to catch or deter jumpers became more popular. Studies showed that the installation of barriers or nets at suicide hotspots could reduce suicide risk by up to 93%. A Harvard study found that 9 out of 10 people who survive a suicide attempt will not die by suicide at a later date. But pushback came from those who believed the net would sully the aesthetics of the world’s most photographed bridge.

A notorious 2006 documentary, “The Bridge,” in which director Eric Steel captured the final moments of 23 people who died by suicide at the bridge in 2004 with telephoto lenses positioned around San Francisco and the Marin Headlands, led to further outcry over the lack of any physical deterrent to suicide.

Two years later, bridge officials voted 14-1 to construct hanging stainless steel nets 20 feet below the railings. After years of negotiations, contractor disputes and bureaucratic delays, the work was finished at the tail end of 2023.

The net, or, as its officially known, the suicide deterrent system, spans 1.7 miles, covering around 95% of the bridge on both sides and extending 20 feet out over the water.

“Last year’s dramatic decline in suicides and attempts on the Golden Gate Bridge is a direct result of the lifesaving infrastructure improvements championed by Assemblymember Stefani,” new District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill told SFGATE over email, referring to his predecessor, Catherine Stefani. “I commend the Bridge District for following the lead of dedicated advocates.”

“The net is a proven design that deters people from jumping,” the bridge district said in a statement. It “serves as a symbol of care and hope to despondent individuals, and, if necessary, offers people a second chance.”