Key Bridge Focus Continues Its Steady Shift from Removal to Rebuilding

In the months after the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, state and federal officials maintained a website that posted regular updates of the response to the catastrophe.

Now, state 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 Transit Administration, which owns the toll bridge.

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. State and federal officials said that is proceeding at a steady pace.

The process took a big step forward last week when the Federal Highway Administration 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,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). He and the MDTA say the exclusion has cut significant 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 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,” Williams said.

That was 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. This was simply evaluating a replacement bridge,” he said.

A replacement bridge, but with some differences. 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.

But the bridge itself will be much higher – 230 feet above the river at its highest point, compared to 185 feet before – and the piers supporting the center span will be 1,400 feet apart instead of 1,200, both to allow for the possibility of even larger cargo ships in the future. The bridge itself will be 2.4 miles long, compared to 1.7 miles before, to allow for the slope to the higher center point, and the bridge’s towers will go from 358 feet high before to as much as 550 feet above the water in the new version.

Final design has not been chosen, but in order for the bridge to accommodate the higher, 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.

The original bridge opened on March 23, 1977, and was destroyed in spectacular fashion almost exactly 47 years later, around 1:30 a.m. on March 26, 2024, 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 collapsed 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 an main truck route around Baltimore and stopped all ship traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore. State, federal and private crews scrambled for weeks to free the Dali, remove the debris and clear the river, finally fully reopening the shipping channel in and out of the port on June 11.

The next milestone on the project will be in August, when the bids are due on the first of three procurement requests the state is pursuing on the project.

Gartner said the first procurement will be a design-build contract, for a company to design and build the replacement bridge.

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  oversee the cost estimation and construction inspection of the bridge.Gartner said 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 next year between fall and winter.

“Progressive design-builds gives us the flexibility to work with that team. An early package, for instance, might be this fall: a demo of the existing piers,” Gartner said. “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 (D-Md.) have introduced a bill that calls on the federal government to fully fund the bridge’s replacement. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-7th) had introduced a companion bill in the House, 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. Key Bridge funding could be rolled into a continuing resolution, he said.

“Congress also has to pass what’s called a continuing resolution, to keep the federal government up and running all parts of the federal government,” Van Hollen said.

“So it’s possible that those two initiatives would be combined, right, the measure for the continuing resolution to keep the government open and attached to that, the emergency disaster supplemental,” he added.

Gartner and Williams emphasized the importance of communicating with the community and encouraged residents to reach out to the MDTA if they have any questions. The website can be found here, and MDTA can be reached at the contact us section on the site.

“We’re happy to talk to anyone,” Williams said. “It’s really important with a project of this magnitude that we stay in touch with the community. And this is a great way to get connected with us.”

By Elijah Pittman