Who could build new bridge? How’s the port doing? Your Key Bridge questions answered.

Nearly four months after a ship strike decimated the Francis Scott Key Bridge and killed six construction workers, who would build and pay for a new bridge and the impact on Marylanders’ wallets were among the topics on the minds of readers during a Reddit AMA on Wednesday with Baltimore Sun reporter Hayes Gardner . Below are selected questions and answers from the discussion on the r/Maryland subreddit . Some comments have been edited for formatting, length or clarity.

Any update on contractor selection? Dates, possible contractors, shortlist, etc? ( asked by Agile_Wafer_1291 )

So, the state’s transportation authority has said it will select a builder by “mid-to-late summer,” but has not specified beyond that.

And while several potential builders have not disclosed whether or not they are interested, Webuild , an Italian builder, and its American subsidiary Lane Construction, have not been shy. They released a preliminary vision for a new span in May and confirmed to The Sun that they are part of a team that submitted a proposal. They also recently launched an ad campaign in the U.S.

Another construction and engineering company, Kiewit, said on social media it was “assembling a team,” but has declined to say anything more about its proposal. Regardless, the selected contractor will likely be a group of several companies that team up for the project, expected to cost $1.7 billion.

The Dali incident was tragic and unforeseen, but infrastructure upgrades have been a major need for awhile now. Are you seeing anything at the local/county/state levels to proactively address transportation-related infrastructure? ( asked by JerseyMuscle17 )

It was tragic and unforeseen, but, with the benefit of hindsight, not entirely unexpected. In 1980, a state official said that if a container ship were to crash directly into one of the Key Bridge’s piers, the structure would fall down, and in the 2000s, a Maryland harbor pilot brought up on several occasions the potential danger of a ship hitting the Key or Bay bridges. (Of course, large ships made thousands of transits under those bridges annually.)

There has definitely been an increased national focus on infrastructure protection and, locally, one example is the Bay Bridge . Those spans, like the Key Bridge, were built decades ago and do not have adequate protections. The transportation authority, which owns the Bay Bridge, has said it expects to have a plan for long-term improvements there by the end of the year — but so far, there have been no changes.

The state could require tugboats to assist large ships under the Bay Bridge, but that’s logistically challenging and expensive. It could also build “dolphins” — artificial, protective islands — around the spans, which would likely take years. Also factoring into the calculus is the lifetime of the Bay Bridge. It only has about 15 or 20 more years of life, so any physical upgrades to it would be improving an asset that is on its last legs, rather than investing in a new structure.

The port is very specialized and its location and convenience to rail links is unmatched on the East Coast. However, we all read how port traffic was diverted to places like Norfolk during the shutdown. Has traffic fully bounced back and are there any concerns on the part of port officials that those other ports could build expertise and capacity to compete with Baltimore? ( asked by aresef )

This was a legitimate concern, that Baltimore could get Wally Pipp’ed.* Ports are competitive. (Authorities in Georgia are discussing spending millions of dollars to increase the height of a bridge in Savannah, in large part to compete with other ports, like New York.)

But the shipping channel was fully reopened five weeks ago and traffic has begun to bounce back. A lot of it has “rebounded to nearly 100%,” the executive director of the Maryland Port Administration said this month. Cargo ships from Asia have not fully rebounded yet, but are expected to.

* Wally Pipp was the New York Yankees first baseman who had a headache and took a day off in 1925, prompting rookie Lou Gehrig to take his place. Gehrig had a good game, took Pipp’s starting role and then played 2,130 straight games, a record that stood until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it.

When will the remaining pieces of the old bridge be demolished and what has the prospect of building the new bridge done to budgets/projects/taxes? ( asked by islandsimian )

The remaining structures — which include the ramps and the protective islands in the waters — will be demolished/blasted over a 10-month process beginning this summer/fall. I’d imagine that’s more likely to take place in the fall, which would mean by roughly next summer, it would be completed. Whoever is picked to rebuild the bridge will be tasked with the demolition, too.

Still waiting a bit to see how the new bridge will impact Maryland’s bottom line. President Joe Biden has pledged that the federal government will pay for 100% of the rebuild, but Congress has still not codified that into law. The status quo for a federal highway is that the federal government pays 90% and the state pays 10%, meaning Maryland could have to pay about $170 million.

More immediately, the state’s transportation authority is without one of its moneymakers for the next four years. The Key Bridge brought in $56 million in toll revenue during fiscal 2023, which is money it will be without until 2028.

Where are the authorities in the process of assigning blame for this incident? Who is funding the compensation for the construction workers killed in the incident or will that be determined in a legal proceeding? ( asked by OW61 )

Much of this is TBD. The NTSB report will focus upon preventing similar accidents from happening in the future, but it will provide many details that will be important to assigning blame. The report is not expected to be out until next year, though. The most recent update focused on an electrical component about the diameter of a soda can.

State and federal officials have said that the government could recover “substantial funds,” although they’ve admitted that process will take years.

Is there anything expected to help relieve the traffic on 95 and 895? ( asked by Aybecee6 )

A “temporary bridge” was not pragmatic and never seriously considered as a quick fix, so it will be 2028 before there again is an over-water span across the harbor.

State authorities have been working with Morgan State University, home to the National Transportation Center, on potential solutions to mitigate traffic problems. One possible short-term solution that has been studied is “ramp meters,” which are traffic signals on on-ramps that control how many vehicles enter. Morgan researchers ran scenarios on this that showed “signs of improvement.” So, to answer your question, yes, some things are expected to help relieve I-95 and I-895 traffic. Will they significantly reduce traffic? I guess we’ll see.

Same number of lanes as before, or do they want to expand? How is the construction’s impact on environment being considered? Also, sustainability? (asked by N0SF3RATU)

Good questions — they’re very much related. Building a bridge with more lanes would require additional environmental analysis, which would delay the construction timeline. Building a bridge with the same number of lanes (four total; two on each side) meant that it could be considered a “replacement bridge” and not need additional environmental analysis, since a bridge already existed on that footprint.

The upside is speed of construction. The downside is traffic impacts down the road. If traffic needs increase in the coming decades, this bridge will have the same number of lanes in the year 2100 as it did in 1977.

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