Maryland shifts focus from debris removal to fast-tracked rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge post-collapse. Federal approval fast-tracks project, state pursuing design-build contracts next. Legislators push for federal funding. Background: Bridge collapsed in March, killing workers and halting shipping channel.
In the months after the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Md., state and federal officials maintained a website that posted regular updates of the response to the catastrophe.
Now, Maryland officials are directing the public to a new site: Key Bridge Rebuild.
"It's a great website for everybody. We talk and we have information there for communities. We have information for industry. If you want us to come out and talk to your group, pop-up, flea market — you name it, we'll come," said Melissa Williams, director of planning and program development at the Maryland Transportation Authority (MTA), which administers toll facilities.
That shift reflects the larger movement away from the removal and reclamation operations that consumed the weeks and months after the collapse, and toward the fast-tracked rebuilding of the bridge. Officials in both Annapolis and Washington said that is proceeding at a steady pace.
The process took a big step forward in late July when the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) agreed to grant a categorical exclusion to environmental and other regulatory reviews, since the new bridge will follow the same footprint as the old one, with no new areas likely to be disturbed by construction.
"We saw a major development recently, where the Biden administration essentially greenlighted going forward without a complete environmental review. That's because the bridge will be essentially rebuilt along its current alignment," Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen explained to Maryland Matters.
He and the MDTA have each said the exclusion has cut considerable time from the project's timeline.
Still, Williams emphasized that there were no shortcuts taken in the process of evaluating the environmental impact of rebuilding the bridge.
"Nothing was skipped. Everything was done. All of the environmental resources were fully analyzed," she said of the 143-page categorical exclusion. "But based on the fact that we're not going outside of [the] MDTA right of way, we're building in the same spot, we're building the same number of lanes, just bringing things up to state standards. The impacts were very minor."
Her comments were echoed by MDTA Executive Director Bruce Gartner, who said the exclusion just makes sense.
"When you evaluate different alternatives, different locations, different types, it's a long-involved process," he noted. "This was simply evaluating a replacement bridge."
It may be seen as a replacement bridge, but there will be some differences, Maryland Matters reported. According to the MDTA's document, the new bridge will still be a toll facility that will follow the same path and still carry two lanes of traffic in each direction, although the shoulders will be wider.
For instance, the proposed structure itself will be much higher — 230 ft. above the river at its highest point, compared to 185 ft. before the collapse — and the piers supporting the center span will be 1,400 ft. apart instead of 1,200, both to allow for the possibility of even larger cargo ships in the future.
Additionally, the bridge will stretch 2.4 mi. over the Patapsco River, compared to 1.7 mi. before, to allow for the slope to the higher center point, and the bridge's towers will go from 358 ft. high to as much as 550 ft. above the water in the new version.
Final design has not been chosen, according to Maryland Matters, but in order for the bridge to accommodate the higher and longer center span, the state expects the new bridge will likely be a cable-stayed design as opposed the truss style of the old span.
Procurement, Funding Steps Are Next
The next milestone on the project will come this month when the bids are due on the first of three procurement requests the state is pursuing on the project.
Gartner said the first procurement for the replacement bridge will be a design-build contract.
The second procurement is for the general engineering consultant contract to oversee the design-build team, and the third is the construction management inspection contract to handle the cost estimation and construction inspection of the bridge.
Gartner told Maryland Matters that it is difficult to give exact timelines, but that the design-build contract would be awarded in the fall, with proposals due Aug. 19. He also mentioned that the general engineering consultant contract and the construction management inspection contract would be awarded between the fall and winter of 2025.
"Progressive design-builds give us the flexibility to work with that team. An early package, for instance, might be this fall: a demo of the existing piers," he explained. "So that would probably be the earliest work that people would see."
The next step could be the fight for federal funding.
Van Hollen and Sen. Ben Cardin, Maryland's other Democrat in the U.S. Senate, have jointly introduced a bill that calls on the federal government to fully fund the bridge's replacement. A companion bill was introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-7th District, but neither bill has moved out of committee yet.
Van Hollen said that could change in September, when Congress will have to pass the federal budget or approve a continuing resolution to keep the government functioning at current levels. The Key Bridge's funding could be rolled into that resolution, he added, as an emergency disaster supplement.
The original Francis Scott Key bridge opened on March 23, 1977, and was destroyed in spectacular fashion almost exactly 47 years later when the container ship Dali lost power as it was leaving the Port of Baltimore and slammed into one of the bridge's central piers. The center span fell in a matter of seconds, pinning the Dali and killing six of the eight construction workers who were on the bridge doing road work at the time.
The collapse severed a main truck route around Baltimore and stopped all ship traffic in and out of the port. State, federal and private crews scrambled for weeks to free the Dali, remove the debris and clear the river, before officials finally fully reopened the shipping channel in and out of the port on June 11.
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