How long will it take to rebuild the Baltimore's Key Bridge following its collapse?

A newly built Key Bridge might also likely include sensors to monitor its structural health, like those implemented on Delaware’s Indian River Inlet bridge completed in 2012, said Nii Attoh-Okine, the civil and environmental engineering chair at the University of Maryland.

Attoh-Okine said more information, like the number of vehicles the bridge will have to accommodate and what materials and designs will be used, is necessary to estimate exactly how long a rebuild will take, but suggested it will be years.

“This is a very, very important bridge, not only for Baltimore, not only for Maryland, but for the eastern corridor,” he said. “It’s part of the supply chain.”

Rachel Sangree, an associate teaching professor at Hopkins in the engineering department and a former bridge inspector, noted that a future bridge will likely need to provide a route for handling hazardous materials, which can’t travel through tunnels, as the former bridge did.

“The Key Bridge was very, very tall, so whatever is selected, it will have to accommodate not only these existing sizes of the shipping vessels, but also larger sizes, because we don’t want to design exactly for what we’re seeing right now,” Sangree said. “We always need to be thinking ahead.”

Schafer speculated there will be urgency to clear the site and start rebuilding, and said there will undoubtedly be discussions about bridge protection structures. The Key Bridge was one of the city’s skyline landmarks, which also comes with its own set of design priorities, he said.

“It means something to Baltimoreans, and to the region,” Schafer said. “And so I don’t think a simple, utilitarian bridge would necessarily be built back. I think they’ll think about what they’re creating, and its aesthetics.”

______

(Baltimore Sun reporters Hannah Gaskill, Sam Janesch, Jonathan M. Pitts and Dillon Mullan contributed to this story.)

-------