Construction of the bridge began on April 14, 1969, and it opened to traffic on February 1, 1974. It has a total length of , and a main span of , making the bridge the
fourth longest cantilever bridge in the world, and the longest in the United States. The road has a total of five lanes, divided by a
zipper barrier, which was added to the bridge in 2002, in which a machine can configure the number of lanes in each direction, depending upon traffic volume or construction. The bridge is designated as part of
US 322 and has direct connections with
PA 291 (West 2nd Street),
US 13 (West 9th Street) and
I-95 in Chester and
US 130 in Bridgeport, with a connection to
I-295 and the
New Jersey Turnpike within a radius of the bridge. Originally created to be a connection to one of the then-proposed
freeways in New Jersey, the Commodore Barry Bridge was to connect
I-95 near Chester to, at one point, the
Atlantic City Expressway near
Hammonton, but those plans were eventually scrapped when it was realized that many people in the
college town of
Glassboro would be affected. There are new talks of possibly upgrading US 322 to a freeway from US 130 to
I-295's current Exit 11, or even as far as the
New Jersey Turnpike's Exit 2. There is no mention if this new freeway would be included in the
Interstate Highway System, though it hasn't been ruled out yet, either. On February 2, 1978, an intense fire broke out at
Wade Dump, a rubber recycling facility and illegal industrial chemical dumping site almost directly under the bridge. The heat, rising flames and noxious fumes shut down the bridge temporarily. The burning chemicals injured 43 firemen and caused long-term health problems for the first responders to the fire. In 1981, the location was declared a
Superfund cleanup site and remediation occurred throughout the 1980s. In 1989, the site was deemed safe and removed from the Superfund national priorities list. In 2004 the site was converted to a parking lot for the nearby Barry Bridge Park. ==Tolls==