Quote:
Originally Posted by TowerDude
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.
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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.