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Efforts are underway to swiftly dismantle the bridge over the Patapsco River, with work crews diligently cutting through the massive steel girders and transporting the parts onto waiting barges.
Recently, a fleet of barge-mounted cranes made their way to Baltimore to assist in the important task of clearing the deep-dredged central channel of the Patapsco River. Now, the air is filled with cascades of sparks as workers diligently cut the remnants of the former bridge into smaller, recyclable pieces. According to WorldCargo News, workers were suspended in cages and utilized gas torches or cut through the steel of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The operation was supported by a total of seven cranes, including some with impressive lifting capacities of up to 1,000 and 500 tons.
According to a statement, skilled demolition crews are currently working on removing the upper section of the bridge truss that collapsed. There are currently two crane barges at the scene, one weighing 650 tons and the other weighing 330 tons, both actively working. The wreckage will be lifted and transferred to a barge this evening, taking advantage of the available daylight. A massive land-based crane weighing 230 tons will handle the task of unloading and managing the wreckage at Tradepoint Atlantic before it is transported to a designated disposal site.
The timeline for reopening the port of Baltimore and repairing the bridge is uncertain, potentially taking months or even years. Currently, the main focus is on clearing the wreckage from the northern part of the dredged channel, allowing limited ship traffic in and out of the harbor. In addition to assisting with salvage operations, working ships may also be used for urgent commercial shipping. However, due to the channel operating one-way, traffic flow will be slow.
The salvage operation is quite intricate. The bridge is supported by the bow of the MV Davi, a container ship that collided with the southern pier of the bridge’s central span. This collision resulted in a chain reaction that led to the collapse of the entire structure. The ship has experienced damage below the waterline and has a few flooded compartments towards the front, but it is still afloat. It is crucial to handle the removal of the bridge sections with utmost care to prevent the ship from floating free or pivoting in an uncontrolled manner. This is especially concerning due to the presence of underwater gas and power lines nearby, as well as overhead cable towers in close proximity.
It seems that the initial estimates regarding the speed and cost of repairing the Baltimore bridge were overly optimistic. According to John Carney, the economics editor:
The job of rebuilding the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is going to take a lot longer than many people initially thought—and cost a lot more money. The Associated Press reported Friday that rebuilding the bridge could take “anywhere from 18 months to several years,” according to experts. It pinned the price tag at $400 million “or more than twice that.”
If anything, those are lowball estimates. The original bridge took five years to build from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting. But the planning for the bridge began years before that. It cost $141 million back in the 1970s, the equivalent of $735 million today.
Simply adjusting the 1970s construction costs for inflation, however, does not capture the picture of how much more expensive major infrastructure projects are today than they were 50 years ago. A 2019 Brookings Institution study of costs to build interstate highways found that states spent approximately three times as much to construct a highway mile in the 1980s as they did in the early 1960s. The study stops then because major infrastructure construction has almost ground to a halt since then.
