Hopkins looks at Baltimore´s Key Bridge collapse 1 year later, from the risk of another disaster to disrupted daily lives

As the one-year anniversary approaches of the shocking collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which tumbled into the Patapsco River in the early morning hours of March 26, 2024, after it was struck by the Dali cargo ship, Johns Hopkins has released separate studies on the disaster.

One concludes that other spans — including Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge — are at risk of a similar fate, and another finds that residents are skeptical of the timeline to rebuild and still feeling the effects of the bridge’s loss.

In results released Monday, researchers found that the risk is “pretty substantial” that another ship could crash into one of the nation’s other bridges, said Michael Shields, an associate professor of civil and systems engineering who led the study.

Shields’ team scored various bridges on a range of factors, such as how many large ships pass beneath them, how frequently such vessels veer off course and how far apart its supporting piers are, he said.

The researchers determined that the Bay Bridge, for example, was the 12th most vulnerable bridge in the U.S., and could be expected to be struck by a ship once every 86 years. The relatively short span under which ships traverse the Bay Bridge, compared to bridges such as the Verrazzano-Narrows in New York or the Golden Gate in San Francisco, combined with it being heavily trafficked, contributes to its high score, Shields said.

“The Bay Bridge sees a very large amount of huge ships,” he said, “and it sees a lot of them.”

That is not to say the Bay Bridge will definitely be struck at some point within 86 years, Shields said, but that is the expectation from the available data points.

“Given the current traffic, I would expect to see a ship collide with the bridge within my lifetime,” he said. “We’re not dealing in certainties here. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen 100 years from now. We expect it to have happen in 86 years.”

Shields said the risk has grown for bridges, and continually changes given the level of sea traffic.

“The risk has evolved over time,” he said. “When the Bay Bridge was built, ships were ten to 15 times smaller. In addition, there were far fewer ships, so the risk in the 1950s was smaller than it is today.”

The most vulnerable bridge was found to be the Huey P. Long Bridge in Louisiana, with a collision expected once every 17 years.

The study is part of a federally funded program to study disasters in their immediate aftermath, Shields said, what causes them, and what are the implications and long-term effects. Hopkins quickly organized a research team within a week of the bridge collapse to study it, he said.

The findings come on the heels of the National Transportation Safety Board faulting the state for failing to conduct a risk assessment of the Key Bridge’s vulnerability to being struck by a ship and collapsing.

That triggered a rebuke from Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland Transportation Authority, saying the blame rested solely on the owner and operator of the Dali. The state is among multiple entities seeking damages from Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd, the Singaporean owner and operator, respectively, of the ship.

Saying Maryland and other states had not assessed the risk to existing bridges, the federal agency recommended that they conduct reviews and if needed undertake protective measures to reduce the chance of collapse. It listed 68 bridges that should be assessed.

Shields said he is “optimistic” that the research “will wake up bridge owners to this risk and that we will see changes being made. Right now, there is no mandate that these bridges be assessed for risk.”

Bridges can be bolstered by “a more robust array of dolphins,” protective structures around piers or requirements that vessels be guided by tugboats or by improving the safety of ships themselves, he said.

“These measures are expensive, but that has to be weighed against the costs of losing a bridge,” he said.

Meanwhile, survey data released today by Johns Hopkins found continuing impacts on the daily lives of area residents as a result of the loss of the Key Bridge, which took out a stretch of the southeast part of the Baltimore Beltway, or I-695, that encircles the city. The survey, of close to 1,500 Baltimore City and County residents, found the most impact on getting to work or school, or visiting family and friends, and, to a lesser extent, running errands or going to medical appointments.

The questions were asked as part of the annual Baltimore Area Survey conducted by Hopkins’ 21st Century Cities Initiative.

The effect cut across all demographic groups, such as race, income and employment status, said Mac McComas, the senior program manager of the initiative.

“It speaks to how important the Key Bridge was in the daily life of people in Baltimore,” he said.

The survey found that residents generally have confidence in the government’s ability to rebuild the bridge, but that they think it will take longer than what Maryland officials have estimated. The state’s timeline has construction ending by Fall 2028.

Half of the respondents were told the government anticipated finishing the rebuild in just over four years; of those, about 73% said it would take longer. The other half were not given the state’s estimate of when construction would end, and of those, 65% said it would take longer than four years.

McComas said that skepticism reflects a sense among Americans that major government projects end up taking longer and costing more than expected, such as with the so-called “Big Dig” highway infrastructure project in Boston that was beset by cost overruns and delays. Add to that, he said, the uncertainty of the moment, given where the economy may be headed.

“It’s just the times,” McComas said. “There’s distrust in the government being able to deliver on big projects.”

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