State transportation officials said they are working on strategies to protect the two bridges over the Chesapeake Bay following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The response from Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld comes a month after the National Transportation Safety Board called for nearly six dozen bridges nationwide to undergo collapse-risk evaluations.
Wiedefeld, in a letter to NTSB officials released Monday, said the Maryland Transportation Administration “is developing a comprehensive risk reduction plan” for the two crossings over the bay.
Some of the short-term strategies could include new communications requirements for ship pilots, reduced speeds, one-way transits and managing vehicle traffic on the bridge, according to the response letter.
Longer-term strategies could include physical measures to prevent a strike.
In a statement, the Maryland Transportation Authority, which oversees toll bridges, including the former Francis Scott Key and Chesapeake Bay Bridges, spent $600,000 last spring to study bridge protection at the Bay Bridge spans. It plans to spend a total of $160 million on the project even though the agency was “not obligated to do so under the law.”
The review, conducted by Moffatt & Nichol, was performed as the agency looks at the long-term possibility of replacing the existing spans over the bay.
The NTSB released a report in March as part of its ongoing review of the allision that caused the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024. In that incident, the Dali, a 984-foot-long cargo ship flagged in Singapore, struck the bridge. The resulting collapse killed six people — all of whom were construction workers assigned to a detail on the span over the Patapsco River.
In its report, the NTSB said the state had failed to conduct a critical risk assessment on the bridge despite increases in both the amount and size of ship traffic in the channel. The agency said had the state conducted such an assessment, it would have found the risk for a collapse was 30 times greater than the current industry standard.
The safety board’s March report called on state transportation officials to use updated industry standards to determine the probability of a bridge collapse.
Wiedefeld, in his letter to the NTSB, said the consultants for the transportation administration “conclude the Bay Bridges do not meet the … risk threshold for new bridges.”
The board also recommended the state develop short- and long-term strategies to reduce the likelihood of a collapse caused by maritime traffic.
Michael Shields, an associate professor for civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement that the results of the risk assessment commissioned by state transportation officials “which find that the Bay Bridge does not meet the (transportation industry’s) risk threshold for new bridges, are not surprising” given the university’s own analysis released a month ago.
Shields leads the university’s assessment of bridge vulnerabilities.
The standard for collisions that could cause a collapse should be measured in thousands of years, according to the university study. The Key Bridge would have been in the top 10 most vulnerable in the country, using that standard.
That analysis projected the Chesapeake Bay Bridge could expect a catastrophic collision every 86 years. That placed it in the top 12 in the Hopkins analysis.
The east-bound span opened in 1952, making it more than 70 years old. The west-bound span, opened in June 1972, would be more than 50 years old.
“Nonetheless, the MDTA’s stated commitment to invest in both short-term and long-term protections for the bridge are positive developments that will improve safety and reduce risk,” Shields said in his statement.
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