Rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River will probably take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, experts said Wednesday. But the shipping channel from the Port of Baltimore, a major economic engine for the city, could be cleared in months.
Federal officials also reiterated their pledges to support the effort.
“We still don’t fully know the condition of the portions of the bridge that are still standing or of infrastructure that is below the surface of the water,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at the White House. “So rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.”
Buttigieg declined to provide a timeline either for clearing the shipping channel or rebuilding the bridge. He also noted that there is a difference of opinion on whether a bridge can be built to take a blow from a 100-million-ton freighter like the one that felled the Key Bridge.
The comments came as agencies worked to recover the bodies of six construction workers who died after the bridge collapsed and investigators for the first time boarded the ship that struck the well-traveled span.
The container ship Dali, apparently suffering a power failure, directly struck one of the piers of the 47-year-old bridge at 1:28 a.m. Tuesday. Quick action by officers with the Maryland Transportation Authority police in the minute immediately before the collision stopped traffic from entering the bridge and saved numerous lives, officials said. But there was no time to warn a construction crew working on the middle of the 1.6-mile span.
Two workers were rescued, but six were presumed dead. On Wednesday, officials said two bodies were recovered from the water.
Hours after Tuesday’s incident, President Biden pledged that the federal government would foot the bill to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge, which state officials said carried more than 30,000 vehicles a day. On Wednesday, Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers were exploring the use of “quick release” emergency relief funds to aid in the effort.
Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Gautier, who spoke at the White House alongside Buttigieg, said the Coast Guard’s “highest priority now is restoring the waterway for shipping.” Part of that work, he said, includes stabilizing the Dali and removing it from the Patapsco. He said the Army Corps of Engineers was moving aggressively to conduct underwater surveys and mitigate any pollution threat, noting the ship contained more than 1.5 million gallons of oil and 4,700 cargo containers, 56 of which contained hazardous materials.
Another possible complication, Gautier said, is that the bow of the Dali “is sitting on the bottom [of the river] because of the weight of the bridge debris on there.” Gautier said there was no sign of flooding or damage to the ship below the waterline.
Benjamin W. Schafer, professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said it could take months to remove debris and reopen the channel. “There is, certainly that technology for moving the steel out as quickly as possible.”
Andy Winkler, director of the housing and infrastructure project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said state and federal emergency declarations could help speed the rebuilding process by allowing officials to waive rules and regulations around competitive bidding and competition rules that can sometimes slow large infrastructure projects.
An effort to rebuild a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia in 2023 was originally expected to take months. Instead, it took 12 days in part because officials were able to speed up the bureaucracy, including fast-tracking the permitting process after Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) signed a disaster declaration within 24 hours after the collapse.
Winkler said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has taken a similar action, which could help speed the process of building a replacement bridge.
Even so, efforts to replace the Key Bridge will probably prove more challenging given that it is a structure that also spans a major shipping lane said Winkler, who estimated the cost will be well into the hundreds of millions if not more. As for how long it would take to build a replacement, Winkler said it was too early to predict given that there is likely to be debate around what a new structure should look like.
“Does the bridge need to be higher? Do there need to be additional kinds of fortifications to prevent something like this from happening in the future?” Winkler said. “Any dramatic change to the structure of the bridge or design would open it up to more stringent environmental review.”
Some experts said it’s unlikely a new bridge could withstand the impact of a direct hit from a freighter, while others said it was possible. Some engineers called for an improved warning system in the channel that could more effectively evacuate people and stop traffic in the event of a runaway ship. And they warned residents to brace for a protracted process.
The original Key Bridge took five years to build in the 1970s. Schafer noted that it took seven years to rebuild the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, which collapsed after being struck by a freighter in 1980.
“I’ve lived through quite a few civil infrastructure projects,” Schafer said, “and they’re rarely less than 10 years. So I think that’s what we’re looking at.” He added: “The price tags never seem to be out of the hundreds of millions these days. So I’d be shocked if we’re not at least in that hundreds of millions of dollars.” When the bridge opened in 1977, it cost $60.3 million, which is equivalent to $316 million today.
Atorod Azizinamini, a civil engineering professor at the Florida International University who specializes in structural and bridge engineering, said it is possible for Baltimore to see a new Key Bridge within 2½ years. He described that as a breakneck speed compared with the standard timetable for building similar bridges, which could take as long as a decade from conception to execution.
“Things could go very fast here because everyone knows the world is watching,” Azizinamini said.
The professor, who also directs a center of bridge engineering professionals, said there is typically an order of operations to bridge construction involving environmental impact analyses, permits, design, contracting, fabrication and construction. That process could take several years, and the funding for it is most crucial — and often most time-consuming. In the case of the Key Bridge, Biden’s pledge of federal dollars could shave years off the project, Azizinamini said.
As the new bridge is designed, experts said planners should examine ways to prevent future collisions. Azizinamini said he noticed structural vulnerabilities in the Key Bridge when watching videos of its collapse. He said the piers were not as protected as they should have been.
“This was an accident waiting to happen if you don’t protect the columns of support from a ship,” he said. “And in this case, it happened.”
Azizinamini said he expects to see new guidance from the National Transportation Safety Board recommending that engineers reexamine older bridges and build new protecting structures if needed.
Some states are building protection systems around vital bridges. Last year, officials from a joint New Jersey and Delaware bridge authority announced work on eight 80-foot-wide stone-filled cylinders designed to protect the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The existing protection for the bridge tower piers dates to 1951.
“Today’s tankers and ships are bigger and faster than those of the 1950s and 1960s,” the officials said in a statement announcing the nearly $93 million project.
After the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse, which killed 35 people, stronger national standards including protection from errant ships were adopted for bridges in the years that followed, safety experts said.
Some believe engineering measures can be performed to protect such a bridge. Sherif El-Tawil, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan with expertise in bridges, said that if the Key Bridge had been built after those updated standards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials were put in place, the span could still be standing.
When the Key Bridge was constructed in the 1970s, transportation planners considered building a tunnel on the route where the bridge was built. But hazardous materials aren’t allowed in tunnels, and the Key Bridge was the main route for carrying them around and through Baltimore, said Rachel Sangree, a professor in civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins.
“So my expectation is we will rebuild a bridge,” Sangree said. “But will it be in the exact same place and form, and everything? It’ll be an open question of what we’re trying to do. And will a bridge be big enough to accommodate these ships? Yes, certainly. But there is a real challenge here with the scale of these cargo ships; they are still going to be similar in scale to the bridge. And we will need to put in a more robust system so that a strike like that doesn’t happen again.”
Michael Laris contributed to this report.
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