State Moves To "Dali-Proof" the Bay Bridge

The Balmer Sun, Maryland to bolster protection at Bay Bridge following Baltimore bridge disaster

The massive ships are going to keep coming.

Baltimore’s shipping channel has been at least partially blocked since March 26, when the cargo ship Dali decimated the Francis Scott Key Bridge. After months of cleanup and marine traffic workarounds using temporary channels, the Coast Guard tentatively planned to fully reopen the waterway Monday.

With the return of huge cargo carriers, however, comes an invitation of risk.

Each time one such vessel transits under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis, there is an infinitesimal, but real, degree of danger. When the Dali leveled the Key Bridge, killing six construction workers and eliminating one of Baltimore’s three harbor crossings, it spelled out the peril that huge ships pose to older bridges.

As a result, the Maryland Transportation Authority is studying “short and long-term options to protect the Bay Bridge,” its chief engineer, James Harkness, told The Baltimore Sun in an interview.

“The Bay Bridge is safe and we are just looking to make it as safe as we can.”

With heightened attention on the risks and consequences of major bridge collapse due to vessel collision, the state must decide how to protect the monstrous 4-mile Bay Bridge. It is the state’s most recognizable span — and its most susceptible to being hit by a huge ship.

Following the Key Bridge disaster, the Federal Highway Authority compiled for the first time a preliminary list of 125 U.S. bridges over waterways used by oceangoing vessels, which The Baltimore Sun obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The Bay Bridge’s two spans were the only Maryland ones listed.

Both several decades old and with a vertical clearance of about 185 feet, the Bay and Key bridges were often discussed — at least when it came to the shipping channel — in the same breath. Before the Key Bridge collapse, Maryland harbor pilots raised with other port stakeholders the possibility of a ship headed to or from the Port of Baltimore losing power and crashing into one of the bridges’ support piers.

But there was otherwise little focus from stakeholders on pier protection systems, which fortify spans from vessel collision, until the aftermath of March 26, when experts pointed to the lack of robust reinforcements at the Key Bridge. The Bay Bridge, which carries more than twice as much vehicular traffic, could be just as exposed.

The transportation authority said there’s now a “renewed focus” on protecting its bridges.

“We are looking to be underway with long-term improvements by the end of the year,” Harkness said of the Bay Bridge.

A transportation authority spokesperson did not reply when asked for details on what upgrades might look like. Options could be physical barriers, like reinforced piers or a yearslong process to build “dolphins” (artificial islands that could block a stray ship). Or there could be policy changes, such as requiring tugboats escort large ships under the bridge.

Both come with logistical considerations — and price tags. . . . 

It's that or continue to gamble. There's nothing like a good catastrophe to focus the mind.