Inside Baltimore’s bridge rebuild

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Apr 16, 2024 View in browser   By Peder Schaefer The wreckage of the cargo ship Dali and the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore today. | Peder Schaefer/POLITICO PORT IN A STORM — 10 tugs, 9 barges, 8 salvage vessels and 7 cranes, including the Chesapeake 1000 — one of the largest marine cranes on the Eastern Seaboard — have descended on Baltimore. In the wake of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March, when the cargo ship Dali lost control and collided with a key support pillar, $60 million in emergency federal funds and numerous salvage vessels have rushed to the city in an attempt to quickly clear the channel to one of the busiest ports in America. The efforts will also set the stage to rebuild the major bridge. According to experts who spoke with Nightly about the salvage and reconstruction, the initial attempts at clearing the channel mark merely the opening act of a much longer, multi-year effort to rebuild the structure. In the meantime, the closure of the port has major economic implications for the regional economy and supply chains across the United States: Thousands are already out of work as the port sits silent, while the economic impact to the region while the port is closed clocks in at over $191 million per day. On a tour of the wreckage site with the Coast Guard today, Nightly watched as the 1,000-ton-capacity Chesapeake 1000 lifted a piece of the mangled bridge out of the shipping channel. Elsewhere, salvagers in bright orange jumpsuits sawed away at parts of the superstructure in their efforts to cut the bridge into small enough pieces to lift out of the water and bring to shore, bit by bit. Platoons of smaller boats buzzed around the massive Dali and commands rang out over megaphones. Some cranes were charged with lifting shipping containers from the stranded vessel, while others removed smaller pieces of the bridge out of the channel. A lone lamppost sticking out of the water was one of the few reminders of the roadway that once crossed the strait. Most ominously for the regional economy, the massive container cranes in the Port of Baltimore that are typically loading and unloading cargo sit silent, useless until the primary shipping channel is cleared and large container ships can enter the harbor. “This is not a normal project, and we’re not right at the beginning of following a normal process,” said Ben Schafer, a professor of engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “Seven years to me seems like the over-under for full reconstruction of the bridge. It’s not a question of technology or engineering, it’s a clear-eyed assessment of what it will take to do it politically and socially.” But even after the salvage efforts are done, government officials and engineers will face a number of thorny questions. Span length — or the space between supporting pillars of the bridge — is the first consideration. The Key bridge had a span length of 1,200 feet, but that didn’t keep the Dali from smashing into one of the pillars. Engineers might consider increasing the span length on a future bridge, to account for the larger cargo vessels that will pass in and out of the port throughout the 21st century. The next consideration is the structure itself. The original Key bridge, built in the 1970s, was a continuous steel truss design, a collection of trusses on four supports that was the standard for those kinds of span lengths in the 1970s, said Rachel Sangree, a professor of engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Nowadays, cable-stayed bridges, which support the roadway using a series of cables attached to soaring pillars, are the norm for crossing of those lengths. A change in bridge design could extend the reconstruction timeline. Finally, there are concerns about how quickly bureaucracy can move to actually approve such a massive construction project. Jim Tymon, the executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said governments had shown in recent decades that it’s able to expedite permitting to rebuild key transportation infrastructure. He pointed to the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. In that case, officials built a new bridge in a little over a year. But the span length there was short, and engineers were able to use a similar bridge design to the original for reconstruction. A better comparison might be the Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa Bay, which partially collapsed in 1980 after a freighter hit a support pillar. That bridge took seven years to rebuild from the time of its collapse. Tymon said that federal and state governments had learned valuable lessons from the I-35W and Sunshine Skyway collapses about how to marshall resources quickly and expedite the permitting process, and he hoped that the Key bridge reconstruction would happen quicker. In the meantime, for the thousands who are out of work due to the Key bridge collapse, time is of the essence. “We’re just trying to keep them calm,” said Scott Cowan, the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 in Baltimore, about the longshoremen who work in the port. He said that of the 2,400 in his local, only 250 to 300 are currently working. “When you don’t have a check coming in and a family to feed, it’s an abrupt change in their daily lives.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at pschaefer@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @p_s_schaefer.   THE GOLD STANDARD OF POLICY REPORTING & INTELLIGENCE: POLITICO has more than 500 journalists delivering unrivaled reporting and illuminating the policy and regulatory landscape for those who need to know what’s next. 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Get the premier news and policy intelligence service, SUBSCRIBE TO POLITICO PRO TODAY.     TRUMP ON TRIAL Former President Donald Trump walks outside during the second day of his trial at a Manhattan criminal court. | Mark Peterson/Pool via AP THE FIRST SIX JURORS — Six jurors have so far been impaneled in the case. They are three women and three men who work in a variety of professions and hail from all corners of Manhattan. Here’s what we know about who they are: A West Harlem man originally from Ireland who works in sales.  A female oncology nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering who lives on the Upper East Side.  A male lawyer who lives in Chelsea.  A Puerto Rican man who works as an IT consultant and lives on the Lower East Side.  A lifelong female Harlem resident who works in education.  A female software engineer who lives in Chelsea. CONTEMPT CLAIMS — Prosecutors filed their motion to hold Donald Trump in contempt for social media posts they allege violated his gag order in the case. In a motion filed today, prosecutors highlighted a number of posts Trump sent on Truth Social attacking Michael Cohen, a potential star witness in the case. Under the gag order, Trump is barred from making statements about possible witnesses in the case and their “potential participation” in the trial. In one of the posts, Trump referred to Cohen and a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office as “thugs.” INTIMIDATION TACTIC — Justice Juan Merchan gave Donald Trump’s lawyers a stern warning today. After Trump attorney Todd Blanche questioned a prospective juror and she left the room, the judge admonished Trump for muttering. “Your client was audibly uttering something,” Merchan said, adding he couldn’t determine what Trump said. “I won’t tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.” COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION — Donald Trump is putting New York City on trial. In his first campaign event since jury selection got underway in the highly anticipated political case, the former president is expected to eviscerate as crime-ridden the city where his fate will be decided. Trump is preparing to visit a bodega following his second day in court in a criminal hush money case. The store was the site of a 2022 fatal stabbing, which the perpetrator described as self defense against an unprovoked attack in a case that inflamed conservatives. Unfolding on the sidelines of the trial, it will serve as the opening of the weeks-long, courtroom-constricted phase of Trump’s campaign — a relentless critique of Democrats’ handling of crime to counter public focus on his own criminal cases. What'd I Miss? — Supreme Court skeptical of feds’ use of obstruction statute in Jan. 6 prosecutions: The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared skeptical today of the way federal prosecutors have deployed a felony charge devised in the aftermath of the 20-year-old Enron financial scandal against about 350 rioters convicted or accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. However, after nearly two hours of argument on the subject, it remained unclear whether the justices had a consensus on how to narrow the interpretation of the law, which prohibits obstructing congressional proceedings. It seemed possible that the court could settle on a view of the law that would preserve the vast majority of the cases the Justice Department filed that used the obstruction statute to level a serious felony charge at a Jan. 6 defendant. — Second Republican endorses push to fire Johnson as speaker: Speaker Mike Johnson’s strategy to pass long-stalled Ukraine aid has driven at least one Republican to join Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bid to strip him of his gavel. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) today became the second Republican to publicly back an attempt to end Johnson’s speakership, delivering the message directly to the Louisiana Republican during a closed-door GOP conference meeting. Massie is the first Republican to join Greene’s effort amid rising conservative frustration with the speaker’s proposed foreign aid package. It’s not clear when Greene plans to force the ouster vote, though she has vowed to do it eventually. — Biden set to block Ambler mining road in Alaska wilderness: The Biden administration is preparing to reject a controversial road-building project need to mine major copper and zinc deposits in the remote Alaska wilderness, a move sought by native tribes, but one that would keep critical minerals needed for the U.S. clean energy transition out of reach. In a final environmental analysis due out later this week, the Interior Department is expected to recommend a “no action” alternative, which would effectively kill the Ambler Road Project in its current form, according to two people with knowledge on the matter who were granted anonymity because it was not yet public. A record of decision explaining the administration’s stance is due 90 days after publication of the environmental impact statement. Nightly Road to 2024 JOE FROM SCRANTON — President Joe Biden returned to his working-class childhood hometown of Scranton today to call for higher taxes on the rich and cast Donald Trump as an out-of-touch elitist, part of an attempt to blunt the populist appeal of his predecessor’s comeback bid, reports the Associated Press. Biden’s stop opened three straight days of campaigning in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania while his opponent spends much of the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial. Biden used Scranton, a city of roughly 75,000 people, as the backdrop to argue that getting rich in America is fine, but should come with heftier tax bills. He dismissed Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee and a billionaire, as a tool of wealthy interests. AROUND THE WORLD SHUT IT DOWN — A gathering of Europe’s hard-right elite in Brussels descended into chaos today as police moved to shut down the conference, barricading the venue’s entrance and causing widespread outrage. The National Conservatism Conference had been set to welcome Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and U.K. politician Nigel Farage over the next two days, but law enforcement arrived two hours into the event at the Claridge venue, near the European Quarter, to inform organizers that the shindig would be terminated. “The authorities decided to shut the event due to the possibility of public disorder,” a police officer heard by POLITICO told one of the organizers. The shutters had already come down on the venue where Brexit architect Farage was due to give a keynote speech at 11 a.m. When he got on stage, as drama continued to unfold outside the venue, Farage lambasted the Brussels authorities as “simply monstrous” for attempting to cancel the event. “I knew I wouldn’t be welcome back in Brussels,” the former MEP chafed. The Brexit champion wasn’t alone in his stinging critiques of the city’s bureaucracy. “It’s really something out of a tinpot dictatorship,” Frank Füredi, one of the organizers from right-wing think tank MCC, which is co-sponsoring the event, told POLITICO. “They’re trying to use a technical reason to make a political point. They told the owner that if it doesn’t get shut down they’re gonna cut the electricity.” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, a Flemish liberal, also said: “What happened at the Claridge today is unacceptable. Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy but can never overrule the Belgian constitution guaranteeing the freedom of speech and peaceful assembly since 1830. Banning political meetings is unconstitutional. Full stop.”   POLITICO IS BACK AT THE 2024 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO will again be your eyes and ears at the 27th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles from May 5-8 with exclusive, daily, reporting in our Global Playbook newsletter. Suzanne Lynch will be on the ground covering the biggest moments, behind-the-scenes buzz and on-stage insights from global leaders in health, finance, tech, philanthropy and beyond. Get a front-row seat to where the most interesting minds and top global leaders confront the world’s most pressing and complex challenges — subscribe today.     Nightly Number $79 million The size of the ad buy that the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is planning for 2024. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s spending blueprint includes TV, radio and digital advertising in nine states and comes on the heels of a $239 million spending plan from the super PAC, Senate Majority. RADAR SWEEP IT’S IN THE GAME — If you’ve played video games over the past 10 years, or even followed coverage of them, you’d notice that the worlds they’ve created are starting to look increasingly real. Digital sports’ players’ faces look better, buildings and cars and trees and water all look better, and on down the line. Now, the infrastructure and engineering that has long been used in video games is being transposed onto other projects, like movies, the metaverse, architecture mockups and even military simulations. How far will that type of engineering take us — and how important is it to our digital future? Anna Wiener reports in The New Yorker. Parting Image On this date in 2007: Blacksburg police officers respond to a shooting on the Virginia Tech campus. A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, in a classroom across campus, killing 32 people before fatally shooting himself in the head. | Matt Gentry/AP/The Roanoke Times Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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