Key Bridge rebuild expected to cost up to $1.9B, open in four years

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BALTIMORE, Md. — The rebuilt Francis Scott Key Bridge, estimated to cost up to $1.9 billion and open in four years, will be a cable-stayed structure likely allowing a broader buffer for the main Port of Baltimore shipping channel, Maryland’s top transportation official said Thursday.

Thursday’s estimates brought some clarity after weeks of wide and varying estimates about when the bridge would be rebuilt and how much it would cost.

As salvage efforts continued in the Patapsco River, officials said late Wednesday that they had recovered the body of a fifth person who died after the Dali cargo ship collided with one of the Key Bridge piers and caused it to collapse in March.

Officials identified the victim as Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, 49, of Glen Burnie, according to The Associated Press. The body of a sixth person believed to be dead is still missing. All six victims were Latino immigrants who came to the United States from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

State officials are planning for the new Key Bridge — featuring diagonal cables connecting to vertical towers to support the weight of the bridge deck, and with piers providing ships more room for error — to open in the fall of 2028 and cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion.

It remains unclear whether state contractors will be able to salvage parts of the Key Bridge that are still standing and include them in the new bridge design, though the prospects of doing so may be limited by interstate standards requiring wider shoulders to account for vehicle breakdowns.

“It’s been effective,” Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said of the cable-stayed model in a phone interview. “It’s something we can do relatively quickly, [and] obviously deals with some of the issues that the existing bridge had.”

The new bridge, like other cable-stayed structures, including the nearby Indian River Inlet Bridge north of Bethany Beach in Delaware, will also be less susceptible to collapse than the previous truss bridge.

Baltimore’s Key Bridge destroyed: Everything you need to know

“A truss bridge, as you’ve seen, has a single point of failure — take one pier out, everything comes down because it’s all connected,” Wiedefeld said.

The Maryland Transportation Authority plans to meet next week with potential consultants, contractors and subcontractors as part of the bidding process for constructing a new bridge. Wiedefeld, who chairs the MDTA board, said the state will maintain its procurement procedures and won’t have to suspend rules to expedite the process.

Rifkin Weiner Livingston attorneys Scott Livingston and Barry Gogel wrote in commentary to The Daily Record in April that the MDTA will likely push for a single contractor to design and build the new bridge, allowing the state to hold one entity responsible for the finished project and potentially setting a “no-excuse deadline” for completion.

Gogel, who is a co-chair of the firm’s state procurement practice, and Livingston, a former assistant attorney general who was counsel to multiple state transportation agencies and offices, wrote that the Key Bridge collapse seemed to fit with provisions for emergency and expedited procurements under state statute, too.

The MDTA, an independent state agency responsible for the state’s eight toll facilities, including the Key Bridge, is expected to send out its request for proposals in late May or early June and then move forward with a notice to proceed in the early part of the summer.

Almost immediately after the bridge collapsed, rebuilding the locally iconic structure became Maryland’s top transportation priority.

President Joe Biden has said the federal government will cover the entire cost of rebuilding the bridge, though his promise is contingent on approval from Congress.

The Federal Highway Administration’s emergency relief program — meant for repairs or reconstruction of roads and highways seriously damaged by a natural disaster or catastrophic failure from an external cause — gets $100 million each year, and Congress periodically provides more funding through supplemental appropriations.

The federal share for interstate highways, like Md. Route 695, which comprised the Key Bridge, is generally 90%.

Maryland’s cost estimates to rebuild the Key Bridge align with price tags for projects of a similar scale and complexity in other parts of the country, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Officials also expect the state in the next few weeks to receive $350 million through a Chubb insurance policy on the bridge. The proceeds will likely go to the federal government to help cover the rebuild and recovery efforts, Wiedefeld said.

In lobbying members of Congress, state officials and members of Maryland’s delegation have portrayed the Key Bridge as an essential cog in the national economy. In Maryland, the bridge is critical for local freight routes and southbound traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore.

The bridge’s collapse has also increased costs for small businesses, which for more than a month have had to account for longer transit times and faced shipments being hindered or halted with limited operations at the port.

Wiedefeld said that Gov. Wes Moore has maintained an open invitation for federal officials and lawmakers to visit the port. Top members of the House Appropriations Committee did just that on Thursday.

“Physically seeing it from the water is totally different than seeing it through some film or a photo,” Wiedefeld said.