Crisis at the Key
Baltimore’s Bridge Collapse and Redesigning Resilience
At 1:28 a.m. on Tuesday, the container ship Dali struck a pier supporting Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing the collapse of its main spans and three closest northeastern approach spans.
Four minutes before collision, the Dali suffered a complete blackout and started drifting from the shipping channel. A backup generator covered electrical systems but not the propulsion system. Two minutes before collision, the ship issued a mayday call to the Maryland Department of Transportation saying the Dali had lost propulsion and could possibly collide with the bridge. One of the ship’s pilots requested that traffic across the bridge be halted. The Dali dropped anchor to try stopping, but was unable to prevent the fateful collision, which occurred at a speed of 10 miles per hour.
Seconds later, the bridge fell to pieces.
The Key was a continuous truss bridge, which requires its entire structure to maintain integrity. When the spans on each side of the destroyed pier fell, it was inevitable that the whole bridge would come down, and it did so within 30 seconds.
Everything was up to code, but a code left over from when the bridge was built in the mid-1970s before opening in 1977. It was defended by two layers of protection: “dolphin” concrete structures in the water upstream and downstream from the piers, intended to be sacrificed by a wayward ship to absorb its energy and prevent it from striking the bridge; and pier fenders made of timber and concrete.
These defenses, however, stood no chance against the might of a modern mega-ship. The Dali’s 100,000 tons plowed through the dolphins and fender. A 20th-century bridge could not repel the momentum of a 21st-century cargo ship. Protection measures around bridges must keep up with the times.
Most of the Port of Baltimore is closed as a result of the bridge’s collapse, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore described the accident as a “global crisis” that will affect more than 8,000 jobs.
Rebuilding the bridge could take years, and cost well over $400M, depending on the replacement bridge’s design and the efficiency of government.
Ben Schafer, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, estimates a timeline of five to seven years. Talking to the Associated Press, he pushed back against shorter two-year estimates:
“The lead time on air conditioning equipment right now for a home renovation is like 16 months, right? So it’s like you’re telling me they’re going to build a whole bridge in two years? I want it to be true, but I think empirically it doesn’t feel right to me.”
He told the Washington Post that he’s “lived through quite a few civil infrastructure projects, and they’re rarely less than 10 years. So I think that’s what we’re looking at. 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.” In today’s dollars, the Key Bridge’s final cost in 1977 was $316M.
When a freighter destroyed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida’s Tampa Bay in 1980, its replacement took five years to build, was 19 months late, and ran $20M over budget when it opened in 1987.
However, that was decades ago, and it’s possible that reconstruction efforts have since improved. This is the view of Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. He points to the 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota, and how it was replaced in less than 14 months:
“It’s the best comparison that we have for a project like this. They did outstanding work in being able to get the approvals necessary to be able to rebuild that as quickly as possible.”
Yesterday the National Economic Council called a meeting of the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to discuss the impact of the collapse. The Task Force unites the White House with multiple government departments, including Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and Transportation. To minimize impact while a new bridge is being built, it’s diverting ships to other ports. From the White House Briefing Room statement:
“The Port of Baltimore is one of the nation’s largest shipping hubs and the Francis Scott Key Bridge is critical to travel in the Northeast Corridor. Since the [bridge’s] collapse … the White House and Federal agencies have engaged extensively with industry, ocean carriers, ports, and labor unions to minimize disruptions as shipments are rerouted while the Port of Baltimore is closed to ship traffic. Members of the Task Force shared real-time analysis of sectors with significant activity through the Port of Baltimore, including automobiles, farm machinery, and agricultural products.”
The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced yesterday that it would make $60M available immediately to jump-start the reconstruction. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in the press release:
“The federal emergency funds we’re releasing today will help Maryland begin urgent work, to be followed by further resources as recovery and rebuilding efforts progress.”
He emphasized in a statement at the White House that “rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.” In a separate speech in Baltimore on Tuesday he reminded everybody that the accident was “a unique circumstance,” adding: “I do not know of a bridge that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel of this size.”
Andy Winkler, director of the housing and infrastructure project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the Washington Post that it’s too early to predict the timeline of reconstruction because 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? Any dramatic change to the structure of the bridge or design would open it up to more stringent environmental review.”
Then there’s the question of whether even a new bridge could withstand an impact from another heavy cargo ship like the Dali. Schafer doubts it, and thinks the shipping industry needs systems to keep a ship on track when it loses power, as the Dali did before its collision.
Another idea, offered by John Konrad, a retired ship captain who runs the gCaptain maritime news website and co-authored a book on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, is to require tugboats to accompany massive ships until they pass bridges:
“The safe thing to do is keep the tugs. Moving forward, I think that’s going to happen. The Coast Guard is going to say you’ve got to keep the tugs tied up until you pass the bridge.”
Some analysts have suggested that the shipping interruption in the Port of Baltimore will exacerbate America’s inflation challenge, making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult, but I doubt this. There are many routes into and out of America, including over land from Canada and Mexico. Remember when analysts promised that the blockage of the Suez Canal for six days in 2021 would damage the global economy? It had an impact, to the tune of $1B, but did you notice? Economies adjust.
No, this is not a macro economic or stock-market story. It’s the story of an unfortunate accident, and the challenge of achieving a rapid recovery. With intelligent design improvements and regulatory changes, maybe the new Key Bridge will prove more resilient than its predecessor.
Sources
Al Jazeera
Baltimore Key Bridge collapse: All we know about the ship crash and victims
CNN
Cargo ship lost power before colliding with Baltimore bridge
The Conversation
Baltimore bridge collapse: a bridge engineer explains what happened, and what needs to change
The Associated Press
Building a new Key Bridge could take years and cost at least $400 million
The White House
Readout of Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force Meeting
US Department of Transportation
Biden-Harris Administration Announces $60 Million for Emergency Work in Wake of the Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore
The Washington Post
Rebuilding Baltimore’s Key Bridge will likely take years, experts say
The Washington Post
How a cargo ship took down Baltimore’s Key Bridge
Jason,
Thank you again for a straight-forward, rendition of the facts, relevant circumstances, and potential impact on us all.