On a long enough timeline we all get rammed by a container ship.

I would be interested to know some calculations with factors like: expected bridge lifetime, chance of being rammed per year, cost of making supports strong enough plus an extra safety margin to survive maximum ramming force, cost of having major commercial shipping route unusable for an extended period.

Bridges only last for roughly 50 years. Considering such collisions are rare enough to make the news as a memorable event you can workout for yourself that the odds are quite low over a bridges lifespan.

They are designed to withstand smaller boat impacts because they occur relatively frequently, but cost vs benefit on rare events that are difficult to mitigate is quite different.

> Bridges only last for roughly 50 years.

The bridge projects I've been on spec 75 or 100 years. Main difference is better protection/sacrificial depth on ferrous members.

I remember one of my engineering lecturers giving a good rule of thumb as “your retirement date, plus 10 years”

Do you mean 50 years without maintenance? I would be shocked if major bridges weren't designed to last indefinitely.

Depends on the bridge. Steel and concrete bridges can last for at least 100 years. But it depends on the environment, its expected use, the construction, design. Some famous major bridges failed early due to poor design or poor construction, but many still fail due to lack of maintenance.

The average age of a bridge in the USA is 43 years. But we also have an epidemic of unmaintained bridges.

No bridge made today is designed to last indefinitely. Many different forces will degrade the bridge over time, even with maintenance. Steel stresses weaken it over time. Concrete weathers over time due to salt, chemicals, water, wind, and the steel reinforcements tend to corrode eventually.

Stone bridges may last for an exceptionally long time, but their weight and expense makes them only useful in limited applications, typically as small rail overpasses. Ones that were designed for horse and buggy end up slowly failing as heavier trucks and cars in traffic weaken them.

The same fate lies for timber bridges. When well maintained they can last for 75 years, but it's expensive and requires certain skills. They were also mostly designed before heavier cars and trucks, and for less traffic. Most famous covered bridges today are being closed to traffic due to increased wear.

According to https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/, the federal government oversees more than 610,000 bridges in the USA. There are a lot of unmaintained small bridges. But I'd hope that the major ones get more attention.

Here's a list of major bridges that need attention (& aren't getting it): https://artbabridgereport.org/state/ranking/top-bridges

FHWA provides up to $7 Billion in assistance in maintaining bridges. But it would take at least $125 Billion to begin dealing with the structurally deficient bridges in the USA, according to the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card[1].

Add to this the fact that many bridges in the US are privately owned, and it's the responsibility of the bridge owner to maintain them. But guess what's not profitable for a private enterprise? Maintaining bridges. Despite this, train derailments and property damage continue every year due to unmaintained bridge and train infrastructure.

The executive has proposed funding for repairs, but as usual, it's not enough[2]. So far they've gotten almost half that number of bridges repaired, and pledged another $300M,[3] which is still just a drop in the bucket of what's needed of the backlog; it doesn't address all the new maintenance that will be needed each year.

According to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, there are 167 million crossings on 42,400 bridges rated in poor condition. [4]

[1] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges-infras... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/biden-has-plan-fix-amer... [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... [4] https://artbabridgereport.org/congressional/map

Personally I'm in favour of government maintaining stuff, but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Bridge_Foundation has maintained most of London's bridges privately for nearly three quarters of a millennia so I wouldn't say it can't be done.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying we specifically fail to hold private industry accountable in the US. So we get things like poisonous runoff from agriculture and industrial production, insanely slow and outdated train lines, privately owned bridges that fail and cause injury, property damage and traffic jams, massive wildfires causing property damage and loss of life from unmaintained utility infrastructure, and worldwide banking crises, among other things.

Is it impossible for these things to stop happening? No, not at all. But it's probably not going to stop, in this country, because we let private industry get away with whatever they want. If this were the UK the story would be very different.

Fair. I can't claim to know how to make it work better in the US. We have also other private infrastructure in the UK that's not working so well (like the water companies, which are not providing enough sewage processing capacity and so allow the extra to overflow into rivers)

I mainly made that comment because it still blows my mind the the City Bridge Foundation has been going for 740 years

I can think of at least 5 famous bridges that are way older than 50 years...

Sure, and there's 100's of thousands of replaced bridges that don't immediately spring to mind.

Though to be clear designed to last 50 years isn't the same as saying it will only last exactly 50 years, or that theirs nothing you can do to extend a bridges lifespan if it's replacement is running a little late.

If it is a famous bridge, it seems possible that they’ve done some special extra maintenance, replace more wear-and-tear bits that would normally fail. Eventually you probably get the tourist attraction of Theseus.

Nothing lasts indefinitely...

Interested in this claim, because it sounds about right, except that I can’t name a bridge constructed in the past 50 years.

The bridges we can all name are pushing 100+ right?

Mackinac Bridge is somewhat famous, built in the 1950s.

They more or less do continuous maintenance during the warmer months of the year.

(So older than 50, but younger than 100)

Michiganders will also know the "Z Bridge", completed in 1988

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilwaukee_Bridge

Sticking with the mid-western therme, the Chicago Skyway was built in 1958

First span of the Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron to Sarnia) built 1938, doing just fine as far as I know. (Drove over it a couple of weekends ago.) Second span was 1997.

New York City has had two major recent new bridge replacements that probably about 20M people can name: the Mario Cuomo (formerly Tappan Zee) and the Kosciuszko bridge.

I’d argue the Bayonne Bridge raising kinda counts since it was almost a rebuild and more impressive in many ways since it stayed open the whole time.

Meanwhile in the San Francisco Bay Area they replaced the Bay Bridge…

The Tappan Zee bridge certainly wasn't built with the intention of replacing it after 65 years. Nor, fortunately, was the George Washington bridge.

The old Tappan Zee was basically a perfect encapsulation of "dumb midcentury infrastructure decisions."

1. Built to last only 50 years to save on materials (as the other commenter noted).

2. Built over literally the widest possible part of the Hudson because the governor got in a pissing contest with the Port Authority and wanted all the tolls to go to the state, which wouldn't have been the case had it been built like 2 miles south where the river is narrower.

3. Designed with zero redundancy, such that a "critical fracture could make the bridge fail completely because its supports couldn’t transfer the structure’s load to other supports." [0]

So yeah if we're being real, 50 years was quite optimistic.

The new Tappan Zee is apparently supposed to last 100 years, though given the incidents with substandard materials being used, as well as ever-increasing traffic, who knows.

That said, driving over a bridge 10 years past its planned EOL and being able to look down directly to the water through gaps in the concrete was always a nice feature though -- who needs coffee when you've got that to get your heart rate up!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappan_Zee_Bridge_(1955%E2%80%...

"dumb midcentury infrastructure decisions."

Keeping in mind that mid-century Japan and Germany were in ruins and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of urban centers very much at the top of many people minds. 50 years may have seemed an optimistic survival rate of built structures at the time.

> Started on the cheap during the Korean War, the Tappan Zee was deliberately built to last just 50 years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/nyregion/a-bridge-that-ha...

I can't argue with that!

Agreed I was just addressing the parent poster question of whether anyone can name a major bridge built in the last fifty years…

The eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which had previously been a cantilever bridge, which was damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, and shown to have quite obvious seismic deficiencies.

Its replacement is a self-anchored suspension bridge.

The original western span, actually a double suspension bridge, remains standing, as constructed in 1933, 91 years ago.

So this detail… that is where my misconception arose. Thanks!

The western span had substantial seismic remediation applied in 2000-2001.

The Francis Scott Key bridge - the subject of this story - was finished in 1977, and took about 5 years, so... much of it was constructed in the last 50 years. ???

How many bridges, such as highway overpasses, that you use regularly can you name?

Here's an interesting list of major bridges with dates, most of the newer ones being replacements: https://www.carolinadesigns.com/obx-guide/fun-info/bridges/

They even note a rare exception designed to last 100 years with maintenance.

The Crimean bridge is quite (in)famous, and it was built quite recently.

The Millau Viaduct also comes to mind when thinking of famous, iconic modern bridges.

The Øresund Bridge as well (opened in 2000).

Most of the bridges I can think of in the state of Washington are much newer than that.

There are now two Tacoma Narrows Bridges. The oldest was built in 1950. The one that infamously collapsed was built in 1940. The newer bridge is from 2007. The West Seattle Bridge was closed due to damage in 2020 and reopened after repairs in 2022. It was originally built in the 1980’s after the previous bridge was hit by a ship. There are two floating bridges on I-90 east of Seattle. One of them sunk during reconstruction work in 1990 and was replaced. Theres also a new 520 floating bridge that opened in 2016. The Hood Canal Bridge (also a floating bridge) originally opened in 1961, sunk in 1979, was reopened in the 1980’s, and large parts of it were replaced in the 00’s.

The Ballard Bridge actually is over a century old! It was opened in 1917. However there was a lot of reconstruction done during the 1930’s. The Fremont Bridge is also from 1917. Both of these bridges span a ship canal that was built between 1911 and 1934. The Aurora Bridge was also built in the 1930’s.

I can't imagine how it is to be so insulated from the world to not be able to name a single major bridge construction in the past 50 years.

If you don’t live somewhere with famous/major bridges it’s really easy. I doubt I could name ten bridges period that aren’t in my mid-sized city (and I can only give the correct name for two of the ones here, neither of which is famous). I can only identify maybe four by sight from outside my city—I can name a few that I couldn’t pick out of a lineup of photos.

vincent thomas bridge in LA is from 1960 -- old but not 100+

There's a massive one being constructed right now - the Gordie Howe International Bridge. It'll be the second bridge (and fourth crossing) between Detroit and Windsor when it opens next year. Although maybe I only know of that one because I grew up in metro Detroit.

Depends on the "we" you're talking about, I guess.

In the DC/MD/VA area, almost all the bridges I can name are less than 100 years old. Woodrow Wilson, American Legion, Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Key Bridge, Key Bridge, Nice Bridge, Memorial Bridge, Chain Bridge, 14th street bridges... Some of those were even built after 2000! Also the New River Gorge Bridge in WV is pretty famous and not even 50.

Well, actually, the Key Bridge (in DC) apparently turned 100 years old last year. And I guess the Long Bridge (though not a road bridge) is also over 100...

Living not too far outside Minneapolis, we rebuilt a bridge that rather famously came down a bit over 15 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge

Doesn't the US have a problem with bridges exceeding their expected service lives?

That's a common topic here, yes, though honestly I rarely hear about a bridge collapse. I don't actually remember the last time I saw news of a bridge or overpass collapse that wasn't causes by damage like this.

Makes me want to find the data now. I don't actually known if our bridges are too old, poorly maintained and falling apart early, or if the whole topic is just herd mentality and politics.

>I don't actually remember the last time I saw news of a bridge or overpass collapse that wasn't causes by damage like this.

Fern Hollow Bridge Mk. II?

If we count pedestrian overpasses as part of overpass; FIU pedestrian overpass.

Among the more spectacular recent US bridge failures was the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, which failed during rush hour with bumper-to-bumper traffic with a loss of 13 lives on 1 August 2007: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge>

There's a list of many more failures at Wikpedia, though international in scope:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures>

There are a number of ship-bridge collisions listed, as well as fuel-tanker explosions, which seems to be a surprisingly common failure mode.

Also numerous failures in China, though how much of that is simply a scale effect I can't say.

The boom of bridges after automobiles became common are all running out of time. Yet, paying for a replacement early is also wasteful.

So it's an issue, but those bridges where also constructed by a far poorer nation so it's not that big a deal.

> but those bridges where also constructed by a far poorer nation

That's a must more interesting question when discussing the topic of infrastructure.

Sure we've created a lot more money in the last 50 years, but we've also lost a lot of domestic manufacturing. When it comes to something as vital as roads and bridges are we poorer when we have less paper money or when we are less independent in the manufacturing and maintenance of them?

Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more productive than we where 50 years ago and the US population is 50% larger. That means the government has a lot more resources to work with though how it spends them is another question.

I think people feel poorer because income inequality increased so much. New homes are huge because new home buyers are the upper end of the wealth curve. Same deal with cars etc. Stuff that targets everyone like normal sized TV's ends up being extremely cheap because revealed preferences show people buy cheap when it's an option.

> Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more productive than we where 50 years ago and the US population is 50% larger

Production per capita may have gone up, but that's (a) likely measuring productivity in financial terms and (b) heavily correlated with an increase in natural resource consumption, especially fossil fuels.

If we want to consider ourselves richer because we are able and willing to use more natural resources today could lead down a dark (and very hot) road.

Fossil fuel consumption in the US is down way down especially on a per person basis because of improved efficiency and cheaper alternatives. There's more Americans today, but in many ways we are consuming fewer resources while still being better off.

Compare a modern jet with one from the 1974 and sure many passengers have less leg room but it's hauling both people and 3rd party cargo while still using far less than 1/2 the fuel per passenger mile. Such improvements really add up and include things like engineered lumber using fast growth pines.

Look at the most popular car 50 years ago and you'll see the Ford Pinto. It's slow, unsafe, tiny, time consuming to maintain, fuel inefficient, and missing modern amenities but it was affordable. Inflation adjusted it's roughly the cost of a Mitsubishi Mirage which while better in just about every way is a rough equivalent the reason people are buying crossovers rather than the Mirage today is because people just have more wealth in real terms.

When you say it is "down way down", how much is that exactly?

The data I found only goes back to 1965 [1], but from the absolute peak in the 70s to today we've reduced per capita use by around 30%. Over the last 20 years we've reduced it by around 15%, going back 10 years and the reduction is only around 5%. Time scale matters a lot here, as does a definition of what "way downdowm" would mean in real % reductions.

I totally agree we've made use of oil more efficient in things like engine efficiency. We've also found more uses for oil byproducts, which can be good or bad depending on your opinion (and again, on your time scale). If we've improved fuel efficiency by 50% and at best reduced fossil fuel per capita by 30%, we've squandered some of those gains by using more oil for other things.

Whether that's a good or bad thing is really up to opinion, goals one has in mind, and how one weighs the trade offs.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-per-capita

At this scale even 10% is a big drop, down by 1/3 is IMO down way down.

That chart gives 31% in 49 years 63,836 in 2022 vs 92,635 in 1973, but the numbers are dropping faster each year.

>That means the government has a lot more resources to work with though how it spends them is another question.

it's not that clear-cut. regulations regarding construction are many times more strict, as well employment restrictions and safety code.

I mean, the things like the transcontinental railroad were built with what would largely be considered inhumanely treated human slaves by today standards -- that kind of 'advantageous hiring condition' thankfully no longer exists.

Stuff like that plus millions of other regulatory nuances that drive the cost of development to be many times more expensive than during the bad old 'wild west' make these kind of value analysis gapped by many years near impossible.

The transcontinental railroad was built without modern heavy equipment. Today fewer people can get a lot more work done even with humane working conditions and modern safety code. Which helps explain humane working conditions and modern safety code.

As to regulations, in 2023 an I-95 bridge failed after a gasoline tanker truck fire. They took 12 days to get a temporary replacement that got traffic flowing again. You occasionally see such projects where we need a fix now and then it happens. However, it was a temporary replacement and they needed an actual long term solution.

The difference between such rapid projects and more typical ones include time consuming steps to preventing dirt from settling and causing problems in the future etc. Regulations are filled with such tradeoffs, but that doesn't mean we're unable to move more quickly just that we can afford to do something else.

Money is just a proxy for power, so “poorer” means not able to do something. Note that you are referring to “we” being poorer, and a country’s ability to do (or get) something is not the same as an individual within the country’s ability to do something.

> Bridges only last for roughly 50 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge

Opened in 1781, still in service and perfectly safe. Of course, there are no container ships nearby. But I reckon you could sail a container ship under it, given enough water; and to damage the bridge supports, the container ship would need climbing equipment.

1781 isn't many years after the Declaration of Independence.

I'll raise you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkadiko_Bridge

But that's talking about the tail end of the bell curve not it's center.

That's also a much smaller scale. 22 ft long, 13 ft high, and carries only foot traffic or maybe horses. Much less is demanded of that structure than of a river-spanning mile-long truck-carrying bridge.

If there was enough water for the 48m beam, 24m airdraft container ship that just collapsed the Baltimore bridge to attempt to navigate under the 30m span, 16m high Iron Bridge I don't think the bridge would stand a chance...

Heh! OK, so I'm wrong about being able to sail a container ship under the Iron Bridge.

It didn't take motor traffic, because when it was built, there was no motor traffic. But the claim I replied to was about all bridges. But it used to take vehicle traffic: the WP article says "In 1934 it was designated a scheduled monument and closed to vehicular traffic."

And all bridges do last roughly 50 years. Look at all bridges and figure out the average, median, or mode lifespan is reasonably close to 50 years +/- depends on where you draw the lines.

A tiny fraction reach 500 and so far none that we know of have hit 5,000 though there’s a few possibilities.

This is really bad math, your calculation is not about bridge strength / longevity but about how many bridges we built recently.

For example, if tomorrow we decided to build a new bridge next to every old bridge, average lifespan would half.

current age != lifespan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

> if tomorrow we decided to build a new bridge next to every old bridge, average lifespan would half.

The only way building a bunch of new bridges changes lifespan is if we changed how they where built.

Figuring out lifespan rather than age is at best an approximation after looking at the bridges that didn't survive and the condition of bridges that do, but the uncertainty is low.

Notice it's a pedestrian and not a vehicle bridge as well.

An obsolete or worn-out bridge is likely to be replaced by another, and in such cases, a risk analysis which potentially comes to different conclusions depending on how often such a replacement occurs is missing the point.

“Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”

And in practice only bridges that "barely" stand are economically viable

> only bridges that "barely" stand are economically viable

That really depends on what is counted as part of the economy and who is doing the valuing.

well, "economically viable" doesn't necessarily mean scraping the bottom.

For example the great pyramids of giza are very solidly built. You certainly don't expect that level of build for every commercial or residential building out there.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum you can have buildings that can collapse on minor earthquakes.

There is a balance somewhere in the middle.

I’m a huge “it’s capitalism’s fault” person, but this one feels mostly inevitable. Bridges are wonders of engineering that require this delicate balance, and I don’t think “just build em the old way” is an option. It’s not just price, it’s strength (for non-container-ship events…), span, height, construction time, etc. Obviously I’m in no place to evaluate the specifics of this bridge, and as someone from the SF Bay Area I know allll about corporate corruption fucking up expensive brand new bridges, but I feel like you’re yelling at the moon a bit here. Apologies if I misunderstood though!

It is worth observing that this bridge seems to have 2 pylons and one of them collapsed. The failure seems comprehensible after that - you can see in the video how the balances came apart, there is nothing to hold the left side up so it falls and then remainder of the bridge tried to rotate around the remaining pylon and failed.

It's no surprise that the entire bridge collapses after a pylon collapses. What surprises me is that the pylon collapses. I'd expect those to be extremely solid, with tons of padding. But with ships getting bigger and bigger, I guess there's a limit to what you can account for.

Ships are hundreds of thousands of tons in weight and the momentum acts as a force multiplier. Plus it hit the pylon dead center, which is the worst case scenario. It’s not terribly surprising.

I think there’s also an underlying expectation that any competent ship captain would at least be able to see that they’re on a collision course with the pylon well ahead of time and be able to compensate. Which obviously didn’t happen in this case.

There is another video where we can see two power outage occurred. Ship was uncontrollable but with enormous amount of inertia.

I'm sure captain tried to do anything he can to avoid collision.

The trajectory of the ship seemed near perfect right up until just before the bridge where I suspect it experience it's mechanical issue.

Interestingly, a surprising number of ship-ship collisions occur due to an unnecessary last minute evasive-action manoeuvre between ships that weren't actually on a collision course in the first place. There's a whole section devoted to this in the outstanding book 'Normal Accidents' by Charles Perrow.

Case of, they are built strong, but not that strong.

A container ship has huge inertia, I don't think any bridge could be built to take a direct hit like that.

Container ships of yesteryear are also many times smaller than modern ships.

Thanks! So why are huge—ass container ships allowed to navigate underneath fragile public bridges with single points of failure? The not unlikely worst case is that the ship is out of control for some reason…

We notice these type of accidents because they’re so rare. 5k+ people die each year because of large trucks on the road, by comparison, boats and bridges are very safe — that’s why it’s allowed.

Because the Port of Baltimore is a very major port, and not allowing ships under it really isn't an option.

Vertical clearance for ship traffic might have been the reason this kind of bridge was built in the first place. Otherwise, something lower and more causeway-like might have been sufficient.

If it's a very major port, they can afford to make it a tunnel.

This works fine until there's a story of issues with a tunnel, then we say we should have built a bridge.

Tunnels are far more expensive - the Fort McHenry tunnel was like $750M vs. $140M for the Key bridge, and carried less traffic.

The underlying problem here is that automobiles are inherently inefficient so you either get epic traffic jams or have to massively overbuild capacity, forcing the engineers to deliver as many lanes as they can for the budget.

How expensive is this accident to the city? Likely billions, right?

Your point is correct: if they knew the accident was going to happen today, they might have changed their behavior.

Unfortunately, nobody who knew it would happen today warned anybody.

Yes, but there’s a difference between what people will pay in advance to prevent one of many low probability catastrophic failures and what they’ll think was worthwhile for someone else to have paid to prevent the one which actually happened.

Those calculations are really hard: say they had built a tunnel, what are the odds of the same number of people dying in a fire after someone crashes into another car? Would we have needed to spend any money at all if more people had used railroad alternatives to driving and such an expensive bridge or tunnel was not justified on traffic grounds?

There already are two tunnels for I-95 and I-895 under the port.

Then why is this one a bridge? Why not go all the way and make this a tunnel too?

The tunnel and the bridge run parallel. Tunnels are not suitable for all types of traffic.

> Bids for construction of the proposed Outer Harbor Tunnel were opened in July 1970, but price proposals were substantially higher than the engineering estimates.[11] Officials drafted alternative plans, including a four-lane bridge, which was approved by the General Assembly in April 1971.[12][13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt...

Why does anyone use fragile asphalt (20 years) for busy roads when engineered concrete lasts 50 or more? Because the better option costs more.

This was a big point of contention when a local town announced it was replacing the failing asphalt on the section with the most traffic with slabs of concrete. [0] People complained about the price. Meanwhile, over a decade on, nearby asphalt laid with the same renewal project is already cracking while the busy main thoroughfare remains undisrupted by road work.

It's hard to persuade people that long-term investment is worthwhile.

[0] PDF page 10 (print 17): https://www.dot.ga.gov/PartnerSmart/Public/Documents/publica...

Mostly to have a hazmat route around the city (HAZMAT trucks aren’t allowed in the tunnels) and because bridges are cheaper than tunnels. They needed a third crossing because the traffic warranted it.

> Mostly to have a hazmat route around the city (HAZMAT trucks aren’t allowed in the tunnels)

That is a very interesting point I hadn't considered at all. Price is an obvious point, but I hadn't considered hazmat.

It does make me wonder how hazmat traffic is handled around Amsterdam. I think they are allowed in some tunnels here.

Most highway tunnels (including the Coentunnel and Zeeburgertunnel on the A10 ring road around Amsterdam) are category C tunnels, which means some hazmat allowed depending on the nature of the materials, the quality of the containment, and the volume transported. Notable exceptions are the Schipholtunnel (category A, fewer restrictions) near the airport and the Arenatunnel (category E, severely restricted) under the stadium.

HAZMAT can go the other way around the city on 695. My understanding is that the main issue was cost.

However hazardous cargo is not allowed in tunnels so bridges like this one are the only way hazmat can be transported over water crossings.

On the news this morning a commentator made it sound like that rule was imposed after 9/11.

It makes sense to me that cargo would be restricted, and it's bizarre that it would be related to terrorism (an additional rule isn't going to prevent an attack...).

It's still a sensible rule. As we see with this incident rare events do happen.

The Patapsco is much wider here than at the locations of the two tunnels. It would have been a much bigger and more expensive project to build a tunnel that long.

In addition to the Hazmat issue mentioned below, tunnels have a bad record when fires break out inside them. E.g. the Kaprun disaster [0] which killed 150 people, and the Gotthard Road Tunnel [1] fire, after which the use of large vehicles was constrained.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprun_disaster

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Road_Tunnel#2001_coll...

Vertical Clearance for bridges around ports is the method used around the world. Of course, also tunnels. But building tall bridges for access is very common.

>>Because the Port of Baltimore is a very major port, and not allowing ships under it really isn't an option.

It is now a very large port that is completely closed off from the sea.

And two sides of the city no longer linked

The damage from this accident is only beginning.

Even if loss of control of a large container ship was considered in the design of the city, port, and that particular bridge, ships were not even close to the order of magnitude of mass of today's ships.

And, it lost power at almost exactly the worst moment. What are the odds?

> And, it lost power at almost exactly the worst moment. What are the odds?

I don't know, but I suspect we don't hear much about all the times power is lost at moments that are less than the worst.

EXACTLY!! If it happens often, and they just restart because it's no big deal in the ocean, we wouldn't hear about it.

Of course, it seems that a high(er) frequency of failures should be taken into account for zones where it is critical, such as in port. I just saw a few days ago that a ship docking took out a couple of cargo cranes (sadly, badly injuring a crane operator); didn't seem like a power outage, more of a misjudged steering.

>And two sides of the city no longer linked

Have you looked at a map of Baltimore? They're very much linked, you just have to drive a little farther. The only issue will be that all the traffic this bridge previously carried now has to reroute to the bridge farther north, so now traffic will be much heavier.

Yes, of course; I made the comment after looking at a map.

The direct or short link is now broken. Everyone must now go around the entire harbor, on roads that will now have 40k more cars every day, instead of directly across it. I wasn't saying that some area was a disconnected island, but that many trips will become more costly or non-viable for years until the bridge is rebuilt.

Perhaps I should have said "no longer directly linked", but thanks for the picked nit.

It's not a nit-pick, you said "no longer linked". They are absolutely linked, you just have to drive around a few more kilometers. You said nothing about the traffic load, you wrote that it was absolutely impossible to cross! ("no longer linked")

Perhaps English is not your first language, or you are not recognizing the difference between casual conversation and formal scientific papers.

This is casual conversation. Writing quickly and colloquially, with the assumption that "no longer directly linked" or "no longer linked as they were 10min before" is inferred, certainly to anyone who has seen a map of the area. It should also be inferred from the sentence alone, as if the link had been to an island, then most writers would have made the much stronger point, saying "completely cutoff from the mainland" instead of the much weaker "no longer linked" (just because one link is broken does not imply that there are no others).

If you want to comment that "I was confused by your meaning and it could have been more clear if you said X" is a perfectly fair statement.

But deliberately taking absolutist definitions in a casual conversation where meanings can be implied / inferred, is an unfriendly, oppositional, if not hostile stance.

In any case, I apologize if you were offended that I didn't include all the qualifiers and assumed they would be apparent to the reader. Have a nice day.

English is my first language, but you obviously speak it much worse than most ESL people I know. I even used to live close to Baltimore, so I know the area. You said "no longer linked", not "no longer directly linked". There's a world of difference, and now you're trying to paint your comment as something it was not.

Yes, I've already acknowledged the ambiguity in the original sentence, and I apologize again to you for any confusion it caused you.

However, please learn that ambiguity in informal speech/writing is substantially different from errors in formal edited speech/writing, and different responses are appropriate.

In the context of formal writing (e.g., an academic or industry paper, book, etc.) we should expect almost all ambiguity to be edited out, and not allow for inferences in either direction; i.e., your complaint would be valid.

However, in casual speech/writing (e.g., SMS, social media comments, non-formal emails, etc.) it is common and not serious to leave IMPLIED components in the conversation. It is certainly acceptable to ask for clarification such as "did you mean to imply that some area was made entirely inaccessible by that event?". But it is inappropriate to accuse someone of being dead wrong by leaving out the implication.

The request for clarification should result in the speaker/writer saying "ya, I did mean to imply XYZ, not PDQ, thx for pointing that out." — mutually and efficiently finding the truth. The accusation, especially continued insistence on the accusation being the one true correct way, is the way to start an argument trying to establish dominance.

It might also be worth noting that your class of people — those familiar with the Baltimore area — should have been MOST able to recognize that "not directly" was the inferred meaning, since you know it's not linking an island to the mainland. That you chose the hostile "j'accuse — you are wrong!" form of discussion rather than the collaborative friendly "btw, you did not mean to imply that the bridge linked to an island" (and continued to insist on the hostile approach) tells us all that this is more about your emotional state and/or approach to human interactions than about the ambiguity itself.

Have a great week

Because bridges over harbors are quite common an incidents like this are rare.

The Dutch ports of both Amsterdam and Rotterdam have no bridges at all. It's all tunnels. I think that's the best way to go; the least chance of conflict between road and water traffic.

Tunnels can have other issues: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tunnel_fires and given American drivers I think I’ll take my chances with the big old boats.

Often in America the government waits for something to fail miserably before engaging in a high effort high cost activity that requires a lot of coordination and public buy-in.

Wow.

Random ship hits a bridge.

Shakes fist at sky "the government".

But that's what you do with random events -- create policies to prevent them from happening, lowering the incidence rate and minimizing damage once it occurs. Which is exactly what government and laws are all about.

That is a generous reading of the parent comment.

It sounded much more like a common trope, "the do-nothing government just lets things fail, doesn't take action until something fails".

The amount of arm chair quarterbacking here is astounding. Reddit has a more nuanced conversation than HN right now.

A bridge got hit by a container ship at speed and folks here are talking about this like the bridge was not up to standard, or why there was a bridge there at all when they know nothing about the locale. I am not a structural engineer, but I am going to go ahead and guess that not much would still be standing from a direct hit from a container ship. And from observation bridges like this exist all over the world and don’t regularly get struck by container ships.

It was a freak accident.

If we want to point fingers or question things, perhaps if anything the question is why the container ship lost power repeatedly? Was this a known issue before leaving port?

German Wikipedia has an article on ship deflectors. What is says there is that ship collisions were viewed an an inevitable hazard until the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa. That was 45 years ago.

Trying to search for "ship deflectors" or whatever just brings up pages and pages of Star Wars shields and such in English.

I know they exist, and perhaps after this they'll exist a bit more.

> A bridge got hit by a container ship at speed and folks here are talking about this like the bridge was not up to standard, or why there was a bridge there at all when they know nothing about the locale.

You're right, I don't. But I do know there are other locales where they seem to explicitly avoid bridges crossing heavy ocean traffic.

All roads should be underground! What if a plane crashes into a surface road? Or a meteor? Somebody think of the children!

After making all roads underground: "Tunnel collapses are killing all our children! Let's make all roads above ground!"

> out of control for some reason...

I think the whole ship went dark for a moment. That may have had an impact on the rudder, and then some strong current and/or wind, pushing it sideways.

Couldn't see tug-boats.

Was watching CNN around 6AM EDT, they had a reporter on scene who mentioned wind "whipping across" the harbor. This was in reference to the potential survivability of the freezing cold water, but it seems likely it could have been a factor in pushing the ship off course as well.

Not unlikely? Can you point us to all the other times this has happened? You must know of several given your knowledge of how obviously likely this is.

It's not especially common, but the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay is a famous example. Similar circumstances - it collapsed after being hit by a ship.

The replacement bridge in Tampa famously added "dolphins" which are bumpers in the water to protect the bridge pylons.

that collapsed almost 40 years ago, which really emphasizes it's flat out uncommon, no "buts" needed.

Downvoted for unkindness towards internet stranger.

When has "nothing will happen as long as we can carefully navigate our massive vessels around these critical pillars" ever been a trustable safety measure? Over the long term shit like this will happen if it the possibility that it happens is not excluded by other measures.

This is a public bridge 5 years in the making and who knows how long in planning, and people have been extremely lucky that it collapsed at 3am and not in the middle of the day. It doesn't matter at all how unlikely this is in a given time frame if the impact if it happens at any point in time is catastrophic.

If bridges and container ships indeed do not go together (something I don't necessarily agree with), you probably want to take away the public bridge and continue to let ships go by. This is economically speaking for the area. Car traffic is just not very efficient in the comparison between the two.

Edit: of course there are a ton of other solutions here as well. I am disagreeing with the parent that it is the cars which should get to stay and the container ships which have to move.

You can have smaller container ships. Or have the port outside the bridge. Or indeed replace the bridge with a tunnel, or a better bridge.

Amsterdam has no bridges at all crossing the IJ on the west side (where sea-going ships come from) and only a single bridge on the east side (though there's often talk of adding another). Everything is tunnels.

Rotterdam has bridges (including the famous Erasmusbrug), but only east of the port area. To the west, everything is tunnels. And the largest ships don't even come close to the city center, but dock at the Maasvlakte out at sea.

For both cities, ports have constantly moved closer to the sea.

You don't even need to run it as a tunnel the entire way through - Chesapeake Bay has vehicular traffic routed through a combination bridge/tunnel, using tunnels to span the two major shipping channels crossed by the complex.

The A10 ring in Amsterdam does the same on the east side. The west is all tunnel, the east is half tunnel half bridge.

Baltimore has been in a steady state of decline as long as I can recall. Industry has constantly moved away.

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/as-residents-leave-balti...

>“There’s a lot of people staying [in those cities] and we want to be sure they’re not left with an excess of infrastructure that’s impossible to maintain,” he said. “So what do we do about it?”

Don't know why this is controversial.

I lived in the NOVA area for more than a decade and each visit to Baltimore (every few years) was more depressing. Of course, that's anecdotal but I'll stand by it.

Maybe they felt it was off-topic? Industry has been moving away since the 1950s. Today I read that container traffic has increased over the past couple of years.

It is hard not to feel a sense of tragedy if you know something about the place. It is written all over the city. The blocks and blocks of boarded up row houses speak for themselves. Now they are tearing them down. Maybe that is for the best, but it doesn't seem like a win.

I get the same impressions.

To be able to reach the port. You could argue that such bridges shouldn’t be built in front of ports, but the public also doesn’t like having to drive long detours, and the likelihood of an incident like this one is very low.

Which is why many bridges have stuctures around the pillars to avoid the direct collisions

Yes, and it looks like it did take out an entire section. So it isn't like the ship just 'nicked' it and bent a few members. An entire support was taken out.

Many homes also incorporate lightweight trusses that can fail in a similar fashion. They pose a unique risk for firefighters, which is why New York went so far as to require warnings be posted outside such structures: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2015/01/28/new-york-now-req...