Nearly one year after the cargo ship Dali collided with Baltimore’s Key Bridge, experts at Johns Hopkins University warn ships are “highly likely” to strike major bridges in the U.S., with the risk of “potentially catastrophic collisions” every few years.
“We have dramatically underestimated the risk that large ships pose to bridges across the country,” said Michael Shields, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins who led the study.
After mining data on decades of collisions, bridge construction information, ship traffic data and the rates at which ships go off course, Shields and his team said the Key Bridge would have been among the 10 most vulnerable bridges across the country.
His team predicted it likely would have been hit by a ship within 48 years. It was 46 years old at the time of the collision, according to the university.
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They are now out with a list of 20 other bridges they say are most vulnerable to these strikes.
Despite a warning, officials say they have ‘no regulatory obligation to modify or upgrade’ the Chesapeake Bay Bridge
In the D.C. area, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge made the list, with Shields’ team suggesting a significant collision could occur there once every 86 years.
That makes it less vulnerable than those on top of the list, which include the Huey P. Long Bridge outside New Orleans, where researchers expect a collision once every 17 years, and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which researchers said could expect a collision every 22 years.
“Unless changes are made, I don't see the risk going down, unless somehow ships get smaller and traffic gets less,” Shields told the I-Team.
When asked about Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Shields said he’d like to see collision avoidance and pier protection systems added to the existing bridge.
“There’s a very serious need to look at protections for bridges like the Bay Bridge,” he said.
In response to those concerns, the Maryland Department of Transportation told the I-Team it “has no regulatory obligation to modify or upgrade it,” but because of the Dali incident, “the MDTA is working with outside bridge experts to evaluate the pier protection systems and vessel transit procedures for both the new Key Bridge and the existing Bay Bridge.”
The state added that if upgrades are needed, they will be “prioritized as appropriate.”
Why a researcher flagged concerns about Baltimore's planned Key Bridge replacement
Shields said he’s also concerned about the early renderings of the new Key Bridge, which has yet to be built. He said he would prefer it give ships even more space to maneuver than in the current redesign.
"I was a little disappointed that the span isn't longer than it is,” Shields said.
The span under the old Key Bridge was 1,209 feet long, records show. The Maryland Transportation Authority told the I -Team the new Key Bridge will have a main span of 1,600 feet, 35% wider than before.
Shields suggested a main span of 2,000 feet. A longer span, he said, gives ships more room to correct mistakes and still avoid a collision.
The MDTA called it “premature” to make assumptions at this point in the design, which has many more safety features yet to be revealed.
In response, the MDTA told the I-Team, “It would be premature and inaccurate to make assumptions about the Key Bridge Rebuild when only 15% of the design has been released.”
After the deadly Sunshine Skyway Bridge collision near Tampa in 1980, it took 14 years to finalize new bridge design standards. Every bridge built after that is designed to ideally avoid ship collisions, but those new standards did little to protect bridges that were already standing.
In the wake of the Dali crash, some questioned whether anything could be done to protect aging bridges from a direct ship collision.
"It was going to be difficult for any infrastructure to be able to take on that that blunt level of impact,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told the Today Show following the collision.
Why the NTSB head criticized Maryland transportation officials
More recently, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, criticized Maryland for not doing the work that she said might have prevented the tragedy.
“Had the MDTA conducted a vulnerability assessment of the Key Bridge based on recent vessel traffic, the MDTA would have been able to proactively identify strategies to reduce the risk of a collapse and loss of lives associated with vessel collision with the bridge,” Homendy said at a press conference last week.
In response to those findings, the MDTA said it maintains the Key Bridge catastrophe "was the sole fault of the Dali and the gross negligence of [its] owners.”
What’s more, the NTSB listed the Bay Bridge as among 68 they said have “unknown levels of risk of collapse from a vessel collision." Fourteen of the bridges Shields’ team identified as most vulnerable also appeared on the NTSB’s list.
Shields agreed a boat that big hitting virtually any bridge would cause severe damage and said the key to avoiding another Key Bridge catastrophe is by protecting the bridge from ships to begin with, through concrete blockades and building bridge supports on islands.
"There are immediate investments that we can make,” Shields told the I-Team. “The investments, while not cheap, are much, much lower than the investments would be in the event of an accident."
The nation’s most vulnerable bridges at risk of collision, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers, are:
- Huey P. Long Bridge, Louisiana: Collision expected once every 17 years.
- San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge: Collision expected once every 22 years.
- Crescent City Connection, New Orleans: Collision expected once every 34 years.
- Beltway 8 Bridge, Texas: Collision expected once every 35 years.
- Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, Louisiana: Collision expected once every 37 years.
- Bayonne Bridge, N.Y./N.J.: Collision expected once every 43 years.
- Fred Hartman Bridge, Texas: Collision expected once every 47 years.
- Martin Luther King Bridge, Texas: Collision expected once every 64 years.
- Sunshine Bridge, Louisiana: Collision expected once every 71 years.
- Rainbow Bridge, Texas: Collision expected once every 71 years.
- Veterans Memorial Bridge, Louisiana: Collision expected once every 74 years.
- Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Maryland: Collision expected once every 86 years.
- Talmadge Memorial Bridge, Georgia: Collision expected once every 88 years.
- Veterans Memorial Bridge, Texas: Collision expected once every 94 years.
- Delaware Memorial Bridge, Del./N.J.: Collision expected once every 129 years.
- Dames Point Bridge, Florida: Collision expected once every 152 years.
- Horace Wilkinson Bridge, Louisiana: Collision expected once every 198 years.
- Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, New York: Collision expected once every 362 years.
- Golden Gate Bridge, California: Collision expected once every 481 years.
- John A. Blatnik Bridge, Minnesota/Wisconsin: Collision expected once every 634 years.
Many of D.C. and Northern Virginia's bridges were excluded from the study because they are not at risk of ship collision.
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