One problem with making bridges stronger? Ships getting bigger

As larger and faster container ships began to chug up the Delaware River in recent years, transportation officials feared the prospect of one going astray that would lead to a repeat, or worse, of what happened in 1969, when a tanker struck the Delaware Memorial Bridge and caused significant damage.

So, last year, work began on a $93 million project to build eight massive cylinders that would stand guard in front of the bridge's piers in order to protect a system that carries tens of thousands of vehicles a day.

"The tankers and cargo ships of 1950 aren't the tankers and cargo ships of today," said James Salmon, a spokesperson for the Delaware River and Bay Authority.


Tuesday's collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a cargo ship nearly three football fields long crashed into it, claiming the lives of six people, has prompted questions about whether similar disasters could happen elsewhere.

But the work on the Delaware Memorial Bridge reflects the fact that some transportation and maritime experts have been mulling the hazards of new cargo ships squeezing under decades-old bridges for some time. There are no easy answers, in part because ships keep getting bigger.

Many transportation officials say drawing parallels to the Key Bridge is difficult because what happened in Baltimore appeared to be such an unusual event -- a confluence of factors at the worst time. As the ship, the Dali, hurtled through the harbor without a tugboat connected to it, it experienced a "complete blackout" and lost control, then struck a pier that had small protective barriers.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that they were not only examining the protection system around the Key Bridge, but seeking records about the protections around other bridges in Maryland.

Efforts to enhance bridges are frequently slowed because of the many state and federal governmental entities involved, the often glacial pace of funding and the construction time required for such large-scale projects. Still, some places have seen results.

In Minnesota, a boat pushing 12 barges rammed into a Union Pacific railroad bridge near St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2017, damaging a century-old pier. A protection system was built around the new pier.

In New York, the Bayonne Bridge was raised by 64 feet in 2019 to accommodate increasingly larger vessels calling at the container ports in New Jersey and Staten Island.