Editorial: Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier is making a difference

The steel nets strung below the east side of the Golden Gate Bridge are doing their job dissuading people from choosing it as the place to end their lives.

Installation was completed in 2024, and in 2025, four people died after jumping from the landmark span.

Each of those deaths is a tragedy, but before the net was installed an average of 30 people were reported as having taken their lives at the bridge.

The 2025 reported deaths is a significant decrease.

The number of lifesaving interventions by well-trained bridge patrol officers is also significant. Last year, they prevented 94 people from jumping. For context, in 2017, the number of jumpers was 245.

Both statistics are a testament to the tireless activists who lobbied bridge officials and local politicians to take action to install a suicide barrier to save lives and stem the bridge’s tragic reputation – and its 87-year history as a place to commit suicide.

For many years they – mostly families of the bridge’s suicide victims and local mental health professionals – pressed unsuccessfully for the installation of a barrier. Often they were told it was too expensive, that it would alter the landmark’s appearance or that it wouldn’t stop people bent on taking their lives from doing so in other ways.

They didn’t give up their side of the debate, even though their struggle faced a steep uphill political climb.

Bridge officials decided to stop publicly reporting suicides in hopes that would help step that tragic tide. It didn’t. Then-Marin County coroner Ken Holmes, whose staff would have the job of handling those suicide cases, kept count and helped ensure it was a local public and mental health problem of which the public should be aware.

For years, the number of suicides at the bridge were two or three every month.

Those numbers could have been much worse if the district hadn’t deployed patrols whose officers are trained in spotting and approaching people contemplating suicide and most often talking them into choosing living over jumping.

Last year, thanks to the nets and the patrols, no suicides were reported between June and December. The steel nets proved their effectiveness in not only deterring people from jumping, but if they try, they will likely be caught and trapped in them, possibly injured but still alive.

Today, an 87% reduction in the number of reported fatal falls is a significant correction and proof that the net is dramatically stemming the growth of that record of tragedies. Today, the net – and the community’s investment – is a testament that people cared enough to do something about a tragic situation that would have kept growing.

“The message here is that we’ve really done something meaningful to show that we care, the community cares … That’s what the barrier is about,” said Dr. Mel Blaustein, a Mill Valley psychiatrist who tirelessly argued for installation of a barrier.

The dollars-and-cents cost – $224 million in local, state and federal funds – helped save lives.

The bridge’s sad role in mirroring our nation’s public-health, mental-health and societal problems was the source of studies and research papers, media feature stories and a 2004 documentary film that was shown nationwide.

The death roll at the Golden Gate Bridge is rivaled only by China’s Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge.

Nationally, San Diego’s Coronado Bridge and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay face the Golden Gate’s historic dilemma, but their numbers pale by comparison. The state has started construction on a suicide-prevention net for the Coronado Bridge and, in 2021, an 11-foot-tall fence was installed on the Tampa Bay span.

Those activists who rallied and pressed for Golden Gate officials to do more deserve credit for their tireless commitment that there are measures that can make a difference, that can save lives, that can save families and friends from the tragedy of losing a loved one to suicide.

The numbers should settle any lingering debate.

The 24/7 suicide prevention and crisis hotline is 988, or text “MARIN” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.