The Pulaski Skyway is a four-lane bridge-causeway in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of New Jersey, carrying a freeway designated U.S. Route 1/9 (US 1/9) for most of its length.

Designed by Sigvald Johannesson, the General Casimir Pulaski Skyway opened in 1932 as the last part of the Route 1 Extension, one of the first freeways or "super-highways" in the United States, to provide a connection to the Holland Tunnel.

Unpredictable traffic congestion and its functionally obsolete design make the Skyway one of the most unreliable roads in the United States.

In 2007, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) began a rehabilitation program, which it estimated would cost more than $1 billion and required intermittent closures.

In addition to crossing the Hackensack and the Passaic, the skyway also passes over, not under, the Chaplain Washington-Harry Laderman Bridges and the New Jersey Turnpike (I-95), with which it has no interchange.

An NJDOT single line diagram (2010) shows the General Pulaski Skyway starting at mile post 49.00 of U.S. 1/9, which is just north of the renamed Newark Liberty International Airport.

Trucks have been prohibited for the "safety and welfare of the public"[21] since 1934 because of the state's approval of a local ordinance that was championed by Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City.

[8] In 2011, the Texas Transportation Institute determined that the Skyway was the sixth-most unreliable road in the United States because of the unpredictability of traffic congestion and therefore travel times.

[25] Except for crossings over Jersey City rail lines and the Hackensack and the Passaic, the main part of the skyway is a steel deck truss cantilever bridge, supported by concrete piers.

[33][36][37] Lavis's design for the final viaduct passageway, which would be raised on concrete piers across the Meadowlands, included two vertical-lift bridges 35 feet (11 m) above the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, sufficient for the majority of ships to pass underneath.

The two river bridges, McClintic-Marshall's portion, were completed first,[38][39] and the $21 million[40] road was opened at 8:00 a.m. on November 24, 1932, after an official ceremony the previous day on the Kearny ramp.

On May 3, 1933, the New Jersey Legislature passed a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Eugene W. Hejke of Jersey City naming the road the General Casimir Pulaski Memorial Skyway after Casimir Pulaski, the Polish military leader who helped train and lead Continental Army troops in the American Revolutionary War.

[49] For the construction of the Pulaski Skyway, which began in April 1930, Hague chose four members of the National Erectors' Association, an organization of "open shop" (non-union) steel contractors.

Performance bonds were paid in cash, bypassing Branleygran, and the companies hired Foster's Industrial and Detective Bureau to guard the site against Brandle's threat to "unionize this job or else".

Brandle organized picket lines of loyal union men, and the two sides frequently fought in the streets or in the work area.

Brandle's sole victory was a five-day stoppage in July 1931 by 165 non-union workers, who were interested in higher pay and afraid of the ongoing fights, but decided against joining the union.

[50] During the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee hearings, it was discovered that, in order to save about $50,000 in salary, the American Bridge Company, one of the four contractors, spent almost $300,000 on keeping its "open shop".

[51] The first casualty of the labor battle was a picketer, shot and temporarily paralyzed by a perimeter guard on November 14, 1931, for throwing stones at workers.

Several months later, on February 27, 1932, a car carrying six workers to the construction site was surrounded by union men, who began to beat them with iron bars.

In 1937 and 1938, Hague turned Jersey City into a police state to fight the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was trying to inform workers of their rights under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

On August 14, Justice Thomas W. Trenchard of the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the ban, stating that "the court is not at liberty to substitute its judgment for that of the municipality's as to the best and most feasible manner of curing traffic evils and traffic congestion where such regulation bears a direct relationship to public safety and is reasonable and not arbitrary.

[60] By the 1950s, the skyway was seeing over 400 crashes per year; an aluminum median barrier was added in mid-1956, in addition to a new pavement coating designed to make the road less slippery.

[69][70] As part of a 2005 seismic retrofit project, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority lowered the Passaic River Viaduct Bridge on its easterly alignment to increase vertical clearance and allow for full-width shoulders underneath the Pulaski Skyway.

The agency agreed to pay $1.8 billion[80] to partially fund efforts to rehabilitate the skyway and Route 139, replace Wittpenn Bridge, and extend US 1/9 Truck, all part of the larger distribution network in the Port of New York and New Jersey.

[81][82] In January 2013, NJDOT announced that work on the $335 million projects for repaving and restoration of the roadway would begin at the end of 2013 by the state owned China Construction America Company.

[10] To facilitate the work, the eastbound lanes (northbound US 1/9) would close for two years after the Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014 at the nearby Meadowlands Sports Complex.

[15] The rehabilitation project, with an estimated cost of $1.2–1.5 billion,[82] is being done in phases and spread out over ten contracts, the first of which began in 2012, and the last, for final painting of the steel structure, planned for completion in 2020.

[94][103] To promote public transportation, NJT and PATH offered more frequent peak hour train services to Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City on the Hudson Waterfront, and Manhattan.

State laws require the PANYNJ to spend money only related to its own facilities, unless it gets approval from lawmakers in New Jersey and New York.

[12] Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt and the 1999–2007 television drama The Sopranos include shots of the bridge in the opening montages.