Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge Has Collapsed
 

Perhaps this doesnt warrant an entire thread, but im making one just in case

• Video Link

As of this post, 7 people are missing

Also, seems like the bridge supports shouldve been a bit tougher than that?

Insane. Prayers for everyone affected.

Now we'll see how long it really takes to build a bridge.

Anytime some major road gets messed up you hear "this is usually a 5 year job but we're going to work really hard and do it in 6 months", and then it's done 2 weeks later.

Been watching it all morning. Terrible.

It will probably take weeks just to get the bridge off the bow of the ship. If there's a silver lining at all its that the ship hull wasn't sliced open because then you'd be looking at a horrible bridge collapse AND a disastrous ship sinking right in the harbor channel and all the environmental and economic fallout that would entail.

First priority after rescue operations will probably be opening a shipping lane again, then looking at how to replace it.

I doubt this is going to be a 2-week fix, or even a 2-year fix. You can't just build an interim structure like they often try to in these situations.

I predict a minimum of 5 years before any kind of bridge is reopened and that's probably optimistic. Partly because realistically that may be how long it takes to design and construct a replacement but also because while this crossing is important it's not absolutely vital as there are redundant tunnel crossings that travelers can use.

I'd guess the critical piece is whether they can quickly rebuild the damaged support structure. It's in 30' of water, so they can probably dam it off. Demo and pre-design assessment could start in weeks. Replacement could start in...months?

Emergency replacements tend to skip most of the advance process. Like who care about fisheries, public opinion, funding debates, whether the bridge ought to have a bike lane and bus lanes, or whether to design a taller bridge to improve on the 185' air draft and its limitations on the cruise industry.

The bridge structure will take a while. They can probably pre-assemble some chunks and barge them into place. I'd be curious about whether that sort of thing can be a lot faster than in the 1970s.

But yeah, this will be out for a while.

Looks like the Key Bridge was a designated hazardous materials truck route, as HAZMATs are prohibited in the Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry tunnels, so the detours are going to be quite long.

I wondered about that as I knew they are prohibited from using ANY tunnel anywhere. I guess a more circuitous route is the only answer for the next several years. "Travelers" in my original comment was referring to everyone except commercial traffic, especially anything hauling Springfield's radioactive waste.

This is a terrible tragedy but Yonah Freemark makes a good observation.

@yfreemark
"In the coming years, Baltimore will have one of the largest bridge projects in the country (Key Bridge), one of the largest tunnel projects in the country (Douglass Tunnel), and one of the largest transit projects in the country (Red Line)."

https://twitter.com/yfreemark/status...7Ctwgr%5Etweet

I read somewhere else that it collapsed so easily, like a toy bridge made of toothpicks, because it was a cantilevered bridge. Those bridge styles have now gone out of use because they are too fragile.

Some have pointed out that it may be time for dolphins (islands of stone surrounding bridge piers) to be mandatory as much as possible. This incident is similar to the collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, which collapsed in 1980 when a ship hit the bridge pier.

I imagine the detour for through traffic will be the other half of the Baltimore Beltway, since it is a complete land route. So it may not be quite too long. But the problem is that the other half of the beltway is where most people live, so traffic will be a pain. It is also a big detour for the port trucks going from one side of the Patapsco River to the other with those shipping sites lining it.

While this collapse is definitely a short term and even potentially a medium term disaster for Baltimore, and a supply chain headache for the US and our trading partners I hope that the powers that be in Baltimore and in Washington are seriously considering the opportunity that this Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse presents them ... I mean its a tragedy for sure but this does give the city and the port the opportunity to expand and build an even higher bridge to let even larger commercial shipping in.

Baltimore is currently the 9th largest port in the US. And no port in the US can currently handle the two or three largest size container ships. So maybe this bridge disaster will let the port expand to handle significantly larger ships in the future and perhaps vault Baltimore to the 3rd or 4th largest port in the country.

I'm not sure that Baltimore could be upgraded to handle the absolute largest ships, but if you could dramatically increase Baltimore's capacity, you could give some breathing room for other ports to expand to handle the largest size ships.

All the other ports that can handle the largest container ships are in Europe, China, South Korea and the Persian Gulf.

so … maersk is paying for all this repair and rebuild, right?? :shrug:

Biden said that the Feds would pay for the whole project just to speed up the process, but I do hope that the Department of Justice will work to recoup most if not all of that from Maersk.

There is some gray area as to whether this was a Maersk operation and thus whether they are entirely responsible:


Whoever is ultimately responsible, one thing for sure though is they better have some top shelf Lloyds of London type insurance cause the US Government is going to send them a mighty big bill.

I'd have to agree with that take.

Not to be crass or insensitive talking about this too early, but yes.

An interesting question is since the piers and caissons are already sunk into the harbor floor, could new taller piers just re-use them with some inventive engineering? I can't see why not.

What option below would the region prefer? I'm making some WILD guesses.

Option 1: A bridge of similar design, reusing piers and approaches, using emergency means to fly through the process, opening in two years.

Option 2: A much-improved bridge with breakdown lanes, a bike lane, and 250' clearance to handle continued growth in cruise ships (or at least 200' to handle the New Panamax standard) -- but it takes four years with emergency-level speed.

Option 3: Both bridges. But while the first takes two years, the second takes a full decade and two billion in state/local funds because it's not an emergency.

(Note: A proposed I-5 bridge replacement at the Columbia River is estimated to have a $5b replacement cost, though it's a higher-capacity concept than this.)

PS, I'm not a technical person, but I'd be shocked if existing piers had any use for a taller bridge. The demands on these would be very different, including lateral/wind forces.

in other words, maersk will say it wasn’t me and slip out of responsibility and the contractor ship line will cry broke and have limited insurance … so lawyers will get paid and the taxpayers will end up footing the bill. :hell:

Maybe they should consider building a seawall + bridge.