Pre-construction activity for Baltimore's Key Bridge expected to take months
BALTIMORE -- For about a month, the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) has been working on pre-construction activities around the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Those efforts include surveying, gathering data about the riverbed and soil sampling.
"Taking down the bridge, that's the easy part," said Bill Randow, Deputy Director of Construction for MDTA. "Putting up the new one, now that's the hard part. That's why we have to collect this data."
The bridge collapsed on March 26, 2024, after being hit by the Dali, a container ship that had lost power. The collapse left six workers dead.
Out on the water and the land near the Key Bridge, crews are collecting critical information for the rebuild project.
"We're doing a lot of pile driving, steel piles," MDTA Chief Engineer Jim Harkness said. "You will hear some of the vibration."
Barges on the Patapsco River carried equipment to survey the riverbed and understand the soil underwater.
"The soil is going to have information about the capacity to hold weight to withstand certain forces," Harkness said.
All that data then goes to the design team to explain what is needed to hold up the bridge.
The pre-construction work comes as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore unveiled the design for the new Key Bridge. The new structure will expand the federal shipping channel from 700 feet to 1,000 feet and raise the bridge by 45 feet to increase ship accessibility.
"It's a good bridge for the span distance that we're crossing here, and it's also economical," Harkness said.
Harkness said the MDTA is specifically gathering samples from the location where the new bridge piers could be installed. He said there's an extra level of consideration when it comes to designing the new bridge in the same alignment as the old one.
"You can see the spacing of the existing piers," Harkness said. "Obviously, they have foundations underground and we have to avoid those."
Pre-construction activities are expected to last for a couple of months.
Project engineers said this work doesn't relate to the demolition of the existing bridge. Demolition is set to start in the spring.
Randow said crews will remove the roadbed first, then work to remove the piers.