A 2016 expansion of the Panama Canal ushered in larger ships worldwide. Maryland officials saw economic opportunity in them. Then one hit the Key Bridge.
By Ian Duncan and Michael Laris, The Washington PostCranes are brought in Friday to start clearing debris from where the container ship Dali crashed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday. MUST CREDIT: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
“There is a real challenge here,” said Benjamin W. Schafer, a civil and systems engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University. He said the hulking vessel stuck in the Patapsco River appears unfathomably large butted up against the fallen bridge, even if the 985-foot Dali isn’t among the very biggest container ships.
The shipping industry had been turning to bigger vessels before the expansion, presenting a problem for authorities in Panama, said Joseph L. Schofer, a emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.a standard known as Panamax. That limit meant the canal’s operators were missing out on cargo carried aboard new, bigger ships.
Experts did not recall the risk of a large ship running into a bridge as being a top consideration as East Coast ports rushed to build infrastructure to accommodate the behemoths that were becoming increasingly common in international shipping. Instead, efforts were focused on projects that include dredging deeper shipping channels and a $1.7 billion plan to raise the height of a 90-year-old bridge as port authorities vied to capture cargo carried on what are called neo-Panamax ships.
Still, the 95,000-gross-ton Dali - which passed through the Panama Canal on its way to Baltimore - was far bigger, and experts say it’s unclear what additional protective measures might have prevented the crash. Schafer, of Johns Hopkins, said there’s “little evidence that it’s economically feasible to create a protection system for a cargo ship that is coming at a full, straight-on blow.
Among the most dramatic projects was a $1.7 billion push to raise New Jersey’s Bayonne Bridge by 64 feet. Engineers designed a road deck higher up in the bridge’s arch, giving ships more space to pass through beneath. The project was completed in 2019. In Charleston, S.C., a decade-long, $580 million project was completed in 2022 that gave the port a 52-foot-deep harbor - the deepest on the East Coast.
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