Editor’s note: This story contains discussion of suicide. If you are in distress, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day at 988, or visit 988lifeline.org for more resources.

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.

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“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 engineer 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........

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