The 984-foot long, 158-foot wide vessel that knocked over the Francis Scott Key Bridge is scheduled to sail to China later this month, according to a filing in federal court this week. There, it’s expected to undergo needed repairs in a dry dock, allowing the vessel to return to its business of delivering cargo around the world.

A spokesperson for the ship’s owner and manager, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine, respectively, declined to comment when asked when the ship was expected to return to service. But, experts say, it could be repaired and again ship containers in early 2025.

When the Ever Given, the massive ship that briefly ran aground and blocked the Suez Canal in 2021, underwent repairs, it was back in service within eight months and continues to sail today. The 1,312-foot-long vessel called on a port in Shanghai, China, last week, according to marine tracking data.

Although the Dali’s repairs present a different situation, it could only be a matter of months before it returns to service. Upon the Dali’s arrival in China, a journey expected to take about four weeks, its bow is likely to be entirely replaced by a new, prefabricated one. If that’s the route taken, the ship could be fixed roughly a month after arriving at a dry dock in China, said Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner who hosts the YouTube show “What’s Going On With Shipping?”

Since the Dali crashed into the Key Bridge in the early hours of March 26, killing six construction workers and temporarily blocking the essential shipping channel into Baltimore, there has been a flurry of progress cleaning up the mess. Explosives cut up a huge bridge portion that remained on the Dali, the vessel sailed to Norfolk (while flanked by tugboats), and the channel was cleared of tens of thousands of tons of debris, making way for ships to again regularly call on Baltimore.

The state then selected a builder — construction giant Kiewit — to construct a new span expected to cost roughly $1.7 billion.

Meanwhile, though, the litigation process has really only just begun. The Dali’s Singaporean owner and manager filed a suit in federal court to limit their liability in the disaster and, in response, the City of Baltimore and, more recently, a small propane distributing company, joined others in filing suit against them in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

Claimants have until Sept. 24 (although there is an effort to extend that deadline) to file a claim, but one major shoe has yet to drop. The state of Maryland — which owns the Key Bridge via the Maryland Transportation Authority — has not filed suit, although Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a May news release that the state “will pursue compensation from the responsible parties for the damages caused” by the disaster.

Jennifer Donelan, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, said Friday, “we have no updates at this time.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency tasked with investigating what went wrong, is not expected to finalize its report until next year at the earliest. But litigation is expected to last years beyond that.

It’s not an exact comparison, but when the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska in 1989, litigation lasted roughly two decades. James Mercante, head of the Admiralty Department at Gallo Vitucci Klar, a firm based in New York, pointed to that incident as an example of an especially lengthy litigation process.

With all the claims and issues involved, unless there are settlements, which Mercante said he did not expect (except for perhaps the injury and death claims), the entire litigation and appeals process involving the Dali could last “seven to 10 years,” he said.

By that point, the state of Maryland should have a new Key Bridge — the structure is expected to open by October 2028 — and the Dali will have likely long returned to the seas.

In the maritime industry, timing is often fickle. Logistics, storms and bureaucracies can slow a project and thus, written into many shipping contracts is “G.W.W.P.” meaning, “God willing, weather permitting.” In the Dali’s case, both times it has moved locations since the bridge collapse, its departure date was at least a few days later than initially anticipated.

Thus, it’s hard to know exactly when the Dali will be back in service, but upon arrival in China, shipyard workers will work quickly to cut out damaged portions of the ship’s bow and replace them with prefabricated portions. Ships are built in sections — akin to “Lego blocks,” said Rik van Hemmen, president of marine engineering consultant Martin & Ottaway — and welded together. As the Dali readies for its voyage to China, workers there could already be preparing a prefabricated portion to attach to the vessel upon its arrival.

“They might be building it right now,” Van Hemmen said Thursday of a potential replacement segment.

The Dali’s classification society, ClassNK, is expected to be among those involved in ensuring the ship is sufficiently repaired. Eventually, the vessel will return to delivering goods. And there’s an economic incentive for that to happen quickly.

“If ships don’t move, they don’t make any money,” Van Hemmen said.

The 984-foot container ship, which has a gashed bow and is currently receiving repairs in Norfolk, Virginia, will sail directly to China “on or about September 17, 2024″ according to a letter filed in federal court by the Department of Justice’s civil division Wednesday. The letter states that the ship’s owner and manager have informed “claimants” of their intent to sail and that from Thursday through Sept. 14, the claimants will be able to “perform inspections and testing.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean the ship will actually set sail by mid-September. Both times the Dali was moved since the disaster — from the middle of the Patapsco River to the Port of Baltimore and then from Baltimore to Norfolk — it departed a few days later than initially expected.

The Dali had just left Baltimore in the early morning of March 26, anticipating a monthlong journey to Sri Lanka, when it lost power. Tugboats had helped the ship leave the port, but they were no longer attached to the vessel, and although pilots ordered an anchor drop as the ship headed toward a Key Bridge support, that last-ditch effort couldn’t alter the 100,000-ton vessel’s trajectory.

The ship plowed into the pier, toppling the bridge and killing six construction workers who had been fixing potholes on the span. Steel and roadway littered the Patapsco River, temporarily closing the shipping channel and necessitating a salvage that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

For nearly two months, the Dali sat in the Patapsco River, amid the cleanup, but after explosives were used to cut up a huge piece of bridge sitting atop the vessel, the ship was refloated and towed back to the Port of Baltimore in May. In June, the ship, escorted by four tugboats, made a slow, 23-hour trip to Norfolk.

By late August, the ship was nearly unrecognizable as all of its thousands of containers had been removed, according to footage from Norfolk TV station WTKR.

The ship’s owners declared “general average” after the calamity, an ancient maritime law that requires cargo owners to chip in on the cost of salvage before they can receive their cargo. The Dali was being chartered by Danish shipper Maersk at the time of the disaster, and Maersk spokesperson Kevin Doell told The Baltimore Sun in an email Wednesday that the shipper “has worked to achieve the release of its customers containers from the owner’s custody.”

The Dali’s Singaporean owner and manager — Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, respectively — have sought to limit their liability in the bridge calamity, but claimants, including the City of Baltimore and, more recently, a small propane distributing company, have filed suit against them.

People with claims against the ship’s owner and manager have until Sept. 24 to file claims in federal court, but an email reviewed by The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday shows an effort to extend that deadline by four months.

Several law and maritime firms — which stated they were representing roughly $42 million in cargo that was aboard the Dali at the time of the crash — have informally requested to push the claims deadline to Jan. 24 so they have time to assess damage to the ship’s containers and cargo, according to the email.

“The majority of the containers were only discharged from the Dali at the end of August and a significant percentage of them will not be delivered to destination until after the current deadline for the lodging of claims against the limitation fund,” the group wrote.

The firms asked parties to the litigation to indicate by Monday whether they object to a January deadline. The group is also seeking voluntary agreement from the Dali’s owners, according to the email.

Asked why the ship is heading to China, Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine spokesperson Darrell Wilson declined to comment. However, shipping experts have long anticipated that the damaged vessel would ultimately receive its most extensive repairs overseas.

When the Ever Given — the 1,312-foot vessel that got stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021, stalling the international supply chain — needed repairs later that year, it received them in a dry dock in Qingdao, China.

Asked by The Baltimore Sun, Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner who hosts the YouTube show “What’s Going On With Shipping?”, predicted that upon the Dali’s arrival in China, there would be an entirely new bow fabricated to replace the damaged one on the current ship.

“They will cut the bow off and put on a new one,” he said.

The agency’s board approved a contract that will allow preconstruction and design work to start next week, marking a notable chapter in the five-months-long saga of the Key Bridge collapse and aftermath.

“It’s really good that we are at this stage to have that partner on board with us to advance the project,” MDTA Executive Director Bruce Gartner said after the vote. “We’ve had so many milestones that we have felt were significant, but we’ve always seen this date as a really major one.”

In the early hours of March 26, an adrift, massive container ship named the Dali crashed into the bridge, sending 50,000 tons of steel and roadway into the river below and killing six construction workers filling potholes on the span. That blocked the shipping channel underneath — the Port of Baltimore’s principal commercial artery — for a little more than two months.

The port continues to recover economically from the shipping shutdown and the bridge’s absence can be felt by any commuter or shipper seeking to cross the harbor.

The $73 million design phase contract awarded to Omaha, Nebraska-based Kiewit Corp. is a down payment on what is expected to be at least a $1.7 billion project to replace the Key Bridge over the Patapsco River. State officials noted that Kiewit has done work for MDTA in the past and boasts a portfolio of similar projects around the nation and globally.

A spokesman for the contractor said it will work in partnership with the MDTA, local subcontractors and suppliers and its workforce “to safely deliver and restore this vital transportation link in the city of Baltimore and the greater region.”

“Our long track record of delivering complex, schedule-intensive work through our extensive bridge, marine construction, dredging and related experience will serve us well to successfully execute this important project,” said Bob Kula, the Kiewit spokesperson, in an email.

Although a contractor has been identified, the specifics of the new bridge have not been decided. The new span is expected to open, though, by October 2028 and likely to be cable-stayed — meaning it would have tall towers, similar to a suspension bridge, with a web of cables connected to the bridge’s deck, or roadway — and will be taller, longer and slightly wider than the old truss bridge.

The new span’s vertical clearance will be at least 230 feet, substantially higher than the old height of 185 feet, and it will be longer to allow the roadway to reach the increased height without requiring drivers to climb a steep incline. The span will be built on the same center line as the old bridge and, like the felled structure, will have four lanes, although the shoulders will be substantially wider in accordance with updated federal bridge code.

The new bridge will be constructed using a design-build method, allowing construction to begin even as the planning process is ongoing, in an effort to expedite the structure’s opening.

Kiewit has experience with design builds and with using that method to construct a cable-stayed span; it was among the builders of the cable-stayed Port Mann Bridge in British Columbia, Canada, which opened in 2012.

Kiewit is involved in another large transportation project in Maryland: the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which will accommodate rail traffic and replace Amtrak’s Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel under West Baltimore. Kiewit is taking on that project, estimated to cost roughly $6 billion in total, with California-based J.F. Shea Construction Inc. The company also has done work for MDTA on the Bay Bridge.

The state in June received four bridge construction proposals. Besides Kiewit, proposals came from Archer Western/Traylor Brothers Joint Venture, Flatiron Halmar Dragados Joint Venture and Maryland Key Connectors.

The state rejected Archer Western’s proposal Aug. 1 after finding it failed to meet contractual requirements. A protest by the company was denied and the company did not appeal to the state’s board of contract appeals by a deadline.

The agency evaluated the remaining proposals and assigned technical and financial rankings. Kiewit ranked first in the technical evaluation, which was weighted more heavily, and third financially.

“We don’t have a design, so we were asking the proposers to give us the team that they can put together,” James Harkness, MDTA’s chief engineer, said about the technical measure in an interview. “What are their capabilities? What have they done previously? How would they estimate? How would they collaborate?”

To arrive at financial rankings, for both bridge design and construction, the MDTA evaluated each contractor’s proposed percentage markups over figures the agency provided. Kiewit proposed higher markups than the others, but ranked more strongly on the technical side.

“That’s the nature of this type of procurement where we don’t have much design,” Harkness said. “We don’t have much for them to tell us the pricing on, because we haven’t worked together and collaborated on that yet.”

One of Kiewit’s first tasks — in addition to designing the new bridge alongside the transportation authority — will be ridding the Patapsco River of the old bridge’s vestiges. The ramps-to-nowhere that remain, as well as the artificial, concrete islands (called “dolphins”) designed to protect the piers will be blasted and demolished either this fall or in the spring.

After about half the design work is done, the state will negotiate a “guaranteed maximum price” with Kiewit on the second, construction phase. Those negotiations will likely include additional opportunities for local firms to participate, Harkness said.

Then, the construction can begin.

“It’s a significant milestone today,” Gartner said in an interview. “It’s the beginning of a really hardworking phase.”

The federal government is expected to foot the bulk of the $1.7 billion bill. Democratic President Joe Biden promised immediately after the collapse that the federal government would pay for 100% of the rebuild, but that has yet to be coded into law. The default for any interstate project is for the federal government to pay 90% of the cost; in that situation, Maryland would be on the hook for roughly $170 million.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat, said this month of the federal government covering the entire cost: “We’re on our way to get that legislation passed.”

On Thursday, the MDTA board voted to use $350 million in property and business interruption insurance proceeds related to the bridge collapse to reimburse the federal government for current and future bridge debris and replacement costs.

Federal authorities also have said they’ll seek to reimburse themselves with funds from culpable parties — such as the container ship’s owner and manager.

Small businesses and the City of Baltimore have already filed suit against the Singaporean owner and manager Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, respectively. A local propane transportation company this week stated in a federal filing that it has “lost profits and lost business” as a result of the collapse and that “an example should be made of” the ship’s owners.

Owner Sean Underwood told The Baltimore Sun that more than 70% of the trucks used to head south from his facility, a route that took them over the Francis Scott Key Bridge, until March 26, when the massive cargo ship Dali toppled the span.

“People just think, ‘Oh, you can take the tunnel.’ Well, we aren’t allowed to run our traffic through the tunnel,” Underwood said of restrictions on hazardous materials in the harbor tunnels. “So what are we supposed to do? Just be put out of business? It might take them five years to fix that bridge.”

On Tuesday, Underwood Energy sued the Singaporean companies that own and operate the Dali, arguing they should be held responsible for damages related to the collapse that also killed six construction workers.

Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group have sought to limit their liability in the disaster, but the propane distributor contended in a legal filing that not only should their liability not be limited, but that “an example should be made” of the ship’s owner and operator.

“We’ve lost sizable clients because of the bridge collapse,” Underwood said in an interview, noting that tractor trailers now must make a 30-mile detour around Interstate 695. “It’s been beyond detrimental to the success of that facility. In our world, you’re successful based on margins of pennies. To essentially double your freight because the bridge is gone, it makes you non competitive.”

His company’s legal filing described the Dali as “unseaworthy” and its owners and operators as “negligent.”

The “allision with the Key Bridge,” Underwood’s lawyers wrote, “was foreseeable, avoidable, and a direct and proximate result of Petitioners’ carelessness, negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, coupled with the unseaworthiness of the Dali.”

Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for Grace Ocean and Synergy, declined to comment on Underwood’s legal filing.

“Unfortunately due to the ongoing investigations, in which we are fully participating and the legal proceedings, it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time,” he said in a statement.

Bryan Short, an attorney for Underwood, called the gas industry a “cutthroat business” and said that his client is now at a marked disadvantage with competitors.

“My client believes that there’s been a great harm to the area surrounding Baltimore that needs to be addressed by the authorities and the parties responsible,” Short said.

Much of maritime law is rooted in decades- and centuries-old precedent. In this case, a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Robins Dry Dock v. Flint, could make it difficult for Underwood’s filing to succeed, Baltimore attorney Charles Simmons said Tuesday. Without direct, physical damage to a claimant’s property (such as the bridge itself or the people and vehicles on it), it is challenging to recover lost business.

“Under the current state of maritime law, it is hard to imagine that these types of claims — without a physical loss or personal injury — are going to result in recoveries involving economic losses,” said Simmons, who teaches maritime law at the University of Baltimore and University of Maryland law schools and practices at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston.

The Dali lost power twice in the shadow of the Key Bridge on March 26, rendering it mostly adrift as it smashed into one of the span’s critical support columns, but the legal claims filed to date against Synergy and Grace Ocean, including Underwood’s, focus on what happened before the massive cargo ship left the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal.

Federal investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the Dali lost power twice about 10 hours before it departed on a voyage for Sri Lanka.

The in-port blackouts, or total power losses, led crew members to switch breakers for the ship’s electrical power system, according to the NTSB’s preliminary investigative report. The replacement breakers tripped after the 984-foot Dali departed early the morning of March 26, causing the first of two complete power losses aboard within about half a mile of the bridge.

More recently, investigators have narrowed their probe on an electrical component about the diameter of a soda can. The NTSB brought in representatives from the ship’s Korean manufacturer, Hyundai, to analyze the device.

Less than a week after the bridge fell, the companies that own and manage the Dali filed under a 19th-century federal statute to clear themselves of liability and limit potential damages related to the collapse to the salvage value of the ship and the revenue it stood to make from its cargo, which they estimated at $43.7 million.

In the weeks and months after the collapse, crews searched for the bodies of six construction workers who plunged to their deaths in the Patapsco River and then removed the crumpled span and tons of highway debris from its murky waters. Those salvage efforts cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and authorities estimate it will take at least $1.7 billion to rebuild the bridge, which officials expect to be completed by fall of 2028.

While responding to the disaster, Maryland and federal officials pledged to hold the Dali’s owner and manager accountable.

Baltimore’s mayor and city council were quick to allege negligence on the parts of the companies behind the Dali, arguing in a court filing that they allowed a ship unfit to sail to leave the Port of Baltimore. Others, including a Baltimore publishing company, followed suit with similar legal arguments.

The law that Synergy and Grace Ocean filed under to protect their companies — the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 — came under scrutiny in the aftermath of the Key Bridge collapse. Arguing the statute, designed to protect the maritime industry, was outdated, some federal lawmakers pledged an overhaul.

Democratic U.S. Reps. John Garamendi and Hank Johnson, of California and Georgia, introduced a bill in August that would retroactively increase the liability rate of foreign vessels beginning the day before the bridge collapse. Under their legislation, the companies behind the Dali could be on the hook for as much as $854 million.

Baltimore Sun reporter Madeleine O’Neill contributed to this article.

The transportation authority, which owns the bridge, said the money will go toward funding the completed cleanup, as well as rebuilding the new span, projected to open to traffic in October 2028 and cost roughly $1.7 billion.

The bulk of those insurance funds are expected to ultimately go to the federal government, but the transportation authority and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) did not provide details as to when that money might change hands.

“FHWA is coordinating with Maryland to determine a course of action that follows Federal regulations for the recovery of damages or insurance proceeds but also affords Maryland maximum flexibility and efficiency to begin the reconstruction of this critical structure,” the FHWA said Monday in a statement to The Baltimore Sun.

The policy — a “property and business interruption policy,” per the authority — is the only one held by the transportation authority related to the Key Bridge, which was knocked down by a container ship that had lost power on March 26. The disaster killed six construction workers, tumbled 50,000 tons of debris into the Patapsco River and temporarily stalled shipping commerce into the Port of Baltimore.

In the immediate aftermath, Democratic President Joe Biden pledged that the federal government would pay for 100% of the new bridge — which the federal government has done in other disaster situations — but that has not yet been coded into law. When a federal highway is built, as will be the case when the bridge carrying Interstate 695 is constructed, the default is for the federal government to pay 90%; if that’s the case, it would leave Maryland to pay the remaining 10%, approximately $170 million.

Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, said earlier this month: “We’re on our way to get that legislation passed,” in regards to the federal government fully funding the bridge.

Whether or not the federal government fully funds the new bridge could impact how much state tolls are increase in the coming years, the transportation authority said.

Before the bridge collapse, the transportation authority had forecasted a toll increase during the 2029 fiscal year (which begins July 1, 2028) “due to factors such as inflation,” the authority said in a statement last month. But the authority has predicted a $143.9 million revenue loss over the next five years, because of lost Key Bridge tolls, which might prompt higher fees on Maryland toll facilities, such as bridges and tunnels. Minutes from a June transportation authority meeting indicate that a toll increase would be “systemwide.”

“With the collapse of the bridge, the timing for the increase has been accelerated by 1-year,” the authority said in a statement. “Congressional decisions could impact the size of the increase.”

The next Key Bridge is officially deemed a “replacement bridge,” which enabled it to more quickly receive federal environmental approval. It will be longer, have a higher vertical clearance — at least 230 feet — and wider shoulders, in accordance with updated highway laws, but will be built on the same center line as the old span and also be four lanes wide.

The transportation authority is expected to soon select the contracted builder of the span and is currently accepting proposals for an engineering consultant, which will act as the authority’s engineering representative and will manage the builder. A third request for proposals (RFP) will eventually identify a construction management firm.

The policy initially mandated that students unable to read at grade level would repeat the third grade, but the revised version allows families to seek a waiver that would permit their students to move into the fourth grade. As part of the waiver process, those families would commit to making sure their child gets additional support, such as summer school programming, before-or-after school tutoring or instructional support outside of the school day.

The kindergarten through third-grade policy focuses on identifying struggling students faster and offering more support in earlier grades. Members of the State Board of Education will discuss the revised policy Tuesday and hear public comments on the proposal. The board could vote to approve the policy as soon as September, with the third-grade retention policy taking effect starting with the 2026-’27 school year.

“This round of revisions reflects extensive public input, and our inclusion of that feedback,” Board President Josh Michael said Friday. “The revision as it relates to promotion reflects a core component of this policy — engaging families — and ensures that families are a part of the promotion decision through the waiver process.”

As part of the August update, students can move on to the fourth grade if they score above 735 on third-grade English on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program.

In recent years, many states have threatened to hold back third graders who struggle to read. According to a January report from the Education Commission of the States, 13 states (plus Washington D.C.) require retention for third graders who are not reading proficiently, and another 13 states allow for such decisions at the local level.

Proponents of the retention policies nationally say they seek to reduce “social promotion” — when students move onto the next grade alongside peers despite not meeting academic standards — and boost literacy. But detractors point to the social downsides of holding kids back, as well as the power that a standardized test would wield on the future of many third graders.

The waiver addition aside, Karen Carroll, a retired teacher who works as a new-teacher mentor for schools in Wicomico County, expressed concern about “unforeseen consequences” from a third-grade retention policy, such as more students being held back resulting in larger classroom sizes. Research has found that, after being retained, students are more likely to have behavior problems or other issues, she said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun.

“The whole concept, it has bigger ramifications than just whether the child can read,” said Carroll, who is also an adjunct faculty member at Salisbury University.

State Sen. Mary Washington, a Baltimore Democrat who is active in shaping statewide education policy, said she applauds the renewed focus on literacy as a key to both “academic as well as civic life.” But reading comprehension is a complex issue — made even more complicated by the years of the pandemic — and retention should be considered just one strategy that has potentially negative impacts, she said.

“We shouldn’t simply rely on what some people might call ‘social graduation’ — that moving from one grade level to the next grade level is just a matter of time spent in the classroom versus the true acquisition of the skills able to go to each level,” said Washington, who chairs a top Senate education subcommittee. “However, we really do have to consider the social, emotional implications of this.”

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading development, since reading becomes integral for subjects aside from English, such as math and science.

The proficiency rate in literacy for the state’s third graders reached a nine-year high of 48% for the 2022-23 school year, according to the state education department. Scores for the 2023-24 school year will be released Tuesday.

Under the plan, students who are held back in third grade would receive additional reading interventions, such as more dedicated time for reading lessons, small group lessons, frequent monitoring of reading skills, tutoring and a “read at home” plan with reading activities to do with their parents.

“This August meeting is a really important opportunity for us to gather another round of thoughtful feedback on the policy as we prepare to do, potentially, a final round of revisions,” Michael said.

A spokesperson for the Maryland State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said the association would comment on the policy during Tuesday’s meeting, but not before.

Maryland is in the midst of one of the largest education reforms in decades. The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a 10-year, multi-billion dollar reform plan, seeks to improve math, literacy and educational equity across the state.

The state board also hired state schools superintendent Carey Wright out of retirement last year after her tenure as Mississippi’s state superintendent, where she is credited for lifting the state’s near-last-place national fourth-grade reading scores to 21st in the country. Since being hired in Maryland on an interim basis in October (and then permanently this year), Wright has implemented a resolution requiring all districts to teach students to read using the science of reading, a method based on scientific research that’s considered the most effective way to teach all students to read.

Wright also focused on the science of reading during her tenure in Mississippi, which is among the several states with a third-grade retention policy. Maryland already has several other policies in place that were used in Mississippi, such as the Ready to Read Act, which screens children in kindergarten through third grade three times per year for reading difficulties and dyslexia.

The draft literacy policy would enforce those requirements and improve the reading interventions given to students who struggle to read.

Those interventions include tutoring, small group instruction, after-school lessons and intensive improvement plans for targeted students. The policy also emphasizes training teachers to address reading deficiencies and adding literacy coaches to help educators.

All local school districts would have to create policies for holding students back or allowing them to go to fourth grade. School board policies should “articulate clear reading instruction and intervention services to address student reading needs” and each student and their family would “be informed of that student’s reading progress,” according to the draft policy.

Wright set a reach goal as part of the policy for Maryland to rank among the top 10 states in reading on fourth and eighth-grade exams by 2027.

Baltimore Sun reporter Sam Janesch contributed to this article.

No trams carried visitors up and down the boardwalk. And on a planter near Dorchester Street sat a collection of more than a dozen stuffed animals, an impromptu memorial for a toddler struck and killed by a tram Tuesday night. The 2-year-old boy was declared dead at the scene.

Around 8:14 p.m. that evening, the child had been “crossing the Boardwalk tram pad” when a southbound train struck him, according to a news release from the town of Ocean City. Archived video shows a typical crowd of pedestrians walking the strip, before police set up caution tape and blocked off the scene shortly after the incident.

Local authorities have not yet identified the child, but the town has suspended operation of the trams.

“A potential date for service restoration has not yet been determined,” the town’s website states.

Mayor Rick Meehan said in a statement that there are “no words to convey the profound sadness we feel for the family and their unimaginable loss.”

“Ocean City is a tight-knit community, and we grieve together in times like these,” he said, in part. “We are committed to supporting the family and ensuring that everything possible is done to prevent such tragedies in the future.”

Trams, composed of a Jeep pulling two wagons, shuttle people along a roughly 2-mile path, adjacent to a pedestrian walkway. One tram can hold up to 75 people, according to OceanCity.com, and a one-way ride costs $5.

The trams first began operation in 1964 and, at a Mayor and City Council meeting this past April, attendees discussed ways to celebrate their 60th anniversary. Instead, residents are left making sense of a devastating incident.

Irina Ilina, an Ocean City resident, described it as a “horrible tragedy” for the family and town.

The incident marked the first tram-related fatality in recent memory, according to residents, but locals had warned previously of potential dangers. A 2015 task force, composed of five people appointed by Meehan, analyzed boardwalk regulations as it related to street performers. The task force focused on where artists and vendors could perform, but it also discussed tram safety.

Mark Chase, a performing visual artist who has created spray-paint art in Ocean City since 2010, was on that task force. At the time, he noted that trams traveling near large crowds of people on the boardwalk could result in someone getting “hurt.”

“Because we’ve all seen the tram,” Chase said in 2015. “They don’t slow down. They just honk and keep going.”

As a result of the task force, the city established locations where street performers could and could not perform. They cannot perform, for example, near Dorchester Street, where Tuesday’s fatality occurred.

Reached Wednesday by The Baltimore Sun, Chase echoed the concerns he had nearly a decade ago. Given crowds on the boardwalk, Chase said on a daily basis, he witnesses at least 20 “close calls” of the tram nearly hitting someone. Once, he said, the tram’s side mirror struck him.

“It was inevitable,” Chase said of Tuesday’s tragedy.

The problem, in his estimation, is the tram being too large, especially when a northbound tram and a southbound tram have to pass one another in a narrow area.

“The tram width is far too big for the population density that’s down there on most days,” he said.

Chase, who formerly held a Commercial Driver’s License when he drove a construction tanker and then a school bus, also worried about the ability of the tram to brake. When full of people, the tram can weigh several thousand pounds. (Asked for details on the incident, including roughly how quickly a tram could brake, a spokesperson for the town of Ocean City did not reply.)

“[They’re] not designed with the braking power to basically stop a U-Haul behind them,” Chase said.

Some tram drivers have their CDL, but they are not required to, according to OceanCity.com.

Tram safety also is mentioned when groups apply for private event permits. According to permits outlined during the April meeting of the mayor and City Council, one of the stipulations for hosting a private event in that area is to, “Keep the tram lane clear of event participants and spectators.”

Although the Ocean City tram serves hundreds of thousands of riders annually without incident, there have been similar issues elsewhere around the country and world. A 3-year-old was hit and killed by a tram in Hong Kong last week and, in April, a tram threw multiple riders to the ground after it hit a guardrail at Universal Studios Hollywood in California.

Transportation experts and advocates say that certifying 100% safety on any mode of transportation — from trams to ferries to automobiles to elevators — is impossible, but efforts are made to mitigate risk as much as possible.

In a news release, the town of Ocean City said it is “fully cooperating with law enforcement and relevant authorities in their ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

“The Town asks the community to join us in keeping the family in their thoughts and prayers during this time of mourning,” the statement said.

The massive ships that regularly sail into Maryland carry cars, cargo, commerce — and a degree of potential calamity.

That minute, but real, risk that each vessel presents became horribly apparent March 26, when the 100,000-plus-ton Dali cargo ship decimated the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six men, after losing power at the most inopportune moment. It was an unprecedented disaster, but a huge ship losing propulsion had happened before, many times, in fact. And in the months since the tragedy, there have been other instances of ships experiencing trouble in Maryland waters.

No ship has had a complete loss of power since the Dali did, but in Maryland waters since March 26 there have been at least seven instances of ships experiencing a loss or reduction of power or steering, according to the Coast Guard.

In one case, it was a cargo ship that briefly lost engine power as it departed the Seagirt Marine Terminal while it was tied to tugboats, which safely guided it back into a berth. In others, the issue happened far from any infrastructure.

Another instance, though, occurred Aug. 1 in the direct vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge — bringing to mind a possible disaster even more catastrophic than the Key Bridge collapse. In that case, a 946-foot, old naval vessel named the Denebola, on its way to Texas to be recycled, experienced a steering issue near the bridge. Maryland Transportation Authority Police were notified of a “ship in distress” and stopped vehicle traffic on the bridge for about 15 minutes.

The vessel ultimately regained steering and passed through safely, receiving a Coast Guard inspection near Annapolis before continuing its journey.

The responsibility of ensuring that the gargantuan vessels that regularly call on Baltimore are operating safely falls on the ship’s country of registry — whichever flag it has — as well as its classification society, which certifies a ship’s seaworthiness. Once in U.S. waters, the onus is on the Coast Guard to screen each ship and decide which ones to inspect.

An inspection typically lasts two to four hours, but can take much longer if the Coast Guard notices issues with the vessel, said Cmdr. Brian Hall, the Coast Guard’s chief of Port State Control. The Coast Guard tries “to use our resources as efficiently as possible” and is often updating its protocols, Hall said.

But still, just as there lies a risk of a car accident when even the most heedful driver gets behind the wheel, there is always a chance something goes awry in the water.

“I would say there is certainly an inherent risk to having these huge vessels operating in U.S. waters,” Hall said, “and we do everything that we can to eliminate or mitigate that risk.”

In the minutes before the Key Bridge collapsed, transportation authority police shut down vehicle traffic on the span, likely saving the lives of many drivers. That marked the first time in recent memory, and perhaps ever, that the 47-year-old bridge was shut down due to the emergency threat of a ship strike. There had not been other similarly close calls before; the transportation authority, which owns the bridge, has said it is “not aware” of any prior closings due to the threat presented by a vessel.

When the Bay Bridge’s traffic was temporarily halted earlier this month, that, too, likely marked the first time, according to transportation authority records, that it had been closed due to the potential of a vessel collision. Similarly, a bridge in Charleston, South Carolina, was closed in June when a cargo ship lost engine control and sped through the harbor. That was also the first time the span, the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, had been closed because of an emergency presented by a ship.

The Key Bridge collapse was an anomaly, but it has spurred a renewed focus on infrastructure protection, including a Coast Guard probe analyzing the security of 11 ports across the country. And although ports and bridges can seek to protect themselves — by installing pier protection, requiring tugboats or other measures — the behemoths continue to bring with them a chance of peril. A tiny inconsistency can spell mammoth consequences. As the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the Dali and Key Bridge incident, it is focused on one of the ship’s electrical components, about the diameter of a soda can.

It falls on the Coast Guard to screen and inspect foreign vessels. Last year, 10,959 different foreign vessels came to the U.S. and the Coast Guard conducted 8,278 exams (inspecting some ships more than once, and others none), detaining 101 ships.

Map: Tracking where and when big ships have had trouble in Maryland waters

Older ships and ones that have had problems before, or that haven’t been inspected in a while, are more likely to be examined. Newer ones and those without issues are less likely.

Inspectors meet with the master of the vessel, the chief mate and chief engineer, go over paperwork and then check the overall condition of the ship, its fire safety equipment, its ability to operate, and so on, Hall said.

For three straight years, fire safety deficiencies have been the leading cause of detaining a vessel, according to the Port State Control’s 2023 annual report.

Inspections are unable to prevent 100% of ship troubles, though, as evidenced by the dozens of ships that have experienced issues in Maryland waters alone in recent years.

Just three weeks after the Dali plowed into the Key Bridge, a 590-foot vessel experienced a loss of propulsion 5 miles south of the Bay Bridge and then, in June, a  623-foot bulk carrier had problems two separate times.

As long as ships sail, they will present a threat. And vessels are not only getting larger, given the economic demands of international trade and the supply chain’s reliance on the seas, they are becoming more plentiful, too. The number of registered ships increased from 78,300 in 1990 to 106,700 in 2023, according to Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a Texas A&M-Galveston University professor whose research focuses on transportation and logistics.

Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner who hosts the YouTube show “What is Going on With Shipping?” hypothesizes that during the coronavirus pandemic, many mariners left the industry. That could result in more issues at sea, he said, as could economic pressures to deliver goods as quickly as possible.

In regard to ship inspections, he said that “not enough resources” are allocated to the Coast Guard for them to most effectively inspect ships.

Listing several instances of ships having trouble near other vessels or infrastructure — such as when a cargo ship lost propulsion as it sailed close to New York’s Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in April — Mercogliano said ship issues are something the industry has not yet solved.

“I think it’s really appropriate to put some light on this right now,” he said, “because, again, what we’re seeing is more and more ships [that sail] a lot faster, volatility. We’re sailing much longer now, because they’re getting older [and] we’re not replacing ships as quickly.”

Recently revealed reports into the Key Bridge from the early 2000s explored vulnerabilities in the span and, reached Saturday about the reports, former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening pondered the prevention of a potential future calamity.

“I believe that one of two things has to be done: either much more of an international effort to limit the sheer size of these ships, because of their danger, or a much more concerted national effort for us to retrofit in a major way, a lot of our existing infrastructure,” he said.

It seems unlikely that there will be a reversal in the size of ships, which continue to grow wider, taller and heavier. And Maryland is preparing for that ongoing trend, as the replacement Key Bridge is expected to be taller to make way for the eventuality of larger vessels.

So, the big ships will continue to come. But preventing the next shipping disaster, in Maryland or elsewhere, will likely require a multipronged approach — mitigating the risks presented by ships, as well as boosting infrastructure.

Of the thousands of ships that call on the East Coast each year, rarely are there problems. But as the Key Bridge calamity illustrated, one small issue can create a disaster that, up until that moment, lacked precedent.

Instances of deep-draft vessels experiencing trouble in Maryland waters since March 26

• April 11, Kotor, loss of propulsion, roughly 5 miles south of the Bay Bridge
• May 31, Sheng Ping Ha, issue and location not provided by Coast Guard
  June 6, Baltic K, issue and location not provided by Coast Guard
• June 14, Baltic K, reduced propulsion, in Patapsco River
• July 1, Bellavia, loss of propulsion, in Patapsco River near Seagirt Marine Terminal
• July 10, Algoma Victory, loss of propulsion, in Patapsco River off Fort Howard
• August 1, Denebola, steering issue, near Bay Bridge

He didn’t remember the reports in detail — one of which came out during the final months of his administration, and another which came later — but he recalled the focus, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, on preventing intentional destruction of critical Maryland infrastructure. The studies analyzed vulnerabilities at the Key Bridge and explored the feasibility of installing pier protection to reinforce the structure.

In the 1980s, federal agencies encouraged bridge owners nationally to evaluate spans for vessel collision and, in recent decades, local Maryland pilots discussed the possibility of a ship striking the Key Bridge, or its southern neighbor, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis.

These early 2000s, state-commissioned reports are the latest revelation into warnings unheeded as various government administrations balanced priorities and budgets while the Key Bridge sat insufficiently protected from an ever-growing class of cargo ships.

In the dizzying months and years after the 9/11 attacks, the Democratic administration of Glendening and then his successor, Republican Bob Ehrlich, focusing on preventing and protecting infrastructure from acts of terror. Efforts were centered, given the nature of the 9/11 attacks, more on bombs and airplanes than errant ships.

Glendening, who served as governor from 1995 to 2003, acknowledged that he and others could have done more to follow through on Key Bridge protections.

“I think we should have been much more aggressive on a multi-administration and multi-level government effort and we weren’t,” Glendening told The Baltimore Sun Saturday, “and a lot of it was start-and-stop, studies and discussions, but very little real action.”

Money, as it is wont to do, likely played a key role.

Robert Flanagan, the Secretary of Transportation under Ehrlich, did not recall the studies, but told The Sun: “The transportation budget when we were there was full of priority issues.”

After the 9/11 attacks and threats to California’s Golden Gate Bridge in 2001, engineering consultants created a slideshow analyzing five Maryland bridges and then issued two reports on the Key Bridge for the Maryland Transportation Authority, looking specifically into “intentional destruction.” The first report, published in August 2002, studied vulnerabilities like “explosive threats” and “ship impacts,” and the second, from March 2004, focused upon the feasibility of “stand-off pier protection” at the span. The slideshow and reports’ 160 pages were obtained Friday by The Sun in a Maryland Public Information Act request but were heavily redacted.

The first study came with about five months remaining in Glendening’s time in office and the follow-up report arrived about a year into Ehrlich’s term.

The inaction that followed highlights the competing priorities state agencies must weigh and the potential difficulties in moving forward on a bridge-fortification project that would ostensibly have little immediate benefit — unless the unthinkable happened. It took officials in Delaware decades to generate support and funds for a $95 million effort, which began last year, to install protections around the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

The Key Bridge was ultimately felled by a 100,000-ton cargo ship named the Dali that lost power and accidentally plowed into one of the bridge’s vital support piers, killing six construction workers and eliminating the span. The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the incident is ongoing.

What, precisely, the 20-year-old reports found, and whether they included how much sufficient protections would have cost, for example, remains unknown. The studies were redacted, in part, for security reasons.

Ehrlich served as governor from 2003 to 2007 and neither his Secretary of Transportation, Flanagan, nor the transportation department’s deputy secretary during that time, James Ports, recalled the studies.

The 2004 report on potential pier protection of the Key Bridge did not make it from the Maryland Transportation Authority’s engineers up to consideration by the leaders of the transportation department, Ports said.

“In this case, apparently, the engineers determined it was not a viable threat,” Ports said in an interview Monday.

Both reports, completed by engineering consultants Wallace Montgomery & Associates in partnership with Ammann & Whitney, were submitted to David LaBella, a project manager with the transportation authority. LaBella, who now works at Wallace Montgomery, declined to comment.

Ports said officials did take extra measures to surveil bridges, mostly from intentional attacks, like a bomb, but focused more efforts on airplanes “because that’s how they attacked us last time.” Following the revelation of a 2006 airplane bomb plot originating in London, Ports and other officials traveled to Israel for a week of security training.

“You look at the entire landscape of all of the transportation things that could occur and you try to figure out which ones have the most potential of occurring and those are the ones you harden first,” said Ports, who also served as Secretary of Transportation during Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration, “so that’s what we did.”

The bridge did have some pier protection in the form of small “dolphins,” or artificial islands meant to deflect a ship from bridge supports. In the decades since the span was constructed in 1977, though, ships have grown exponentially in size, making them much greater threats to infrastructure. Ports and others have noted that the bridge, constructed 47 years before its demise, was not built to withstand a hit from the massive cargo ships that now regularly call on Baltimore.

Asked if Maryland, equipped with the knowledge of larger ships, could have physically reinforced its bridges in more recent years, Ports instead pointed to pilots and tugboats, which are non-structural measures that can be taken to prevent vessel collision.

Ships like the Dali are required to be guided by licensed, expert pilots when in Maryland waters. Tugboats do assist them in and out of their berth in port, but were not required to assist vessels under the Key Bridge. In some cases, ships were escorted by tugboats under the bridge, but the Dali was not.

“Keep in mind that the ships have their pilots,” Ports said, “and they could also have tugs [that] move those ships back and forth. So that’s another way to counter that, and that’s something that ship owners would have to pay.”

In its nascent years, a Key Bridge barrier was struck by a 390-foot ship (the Dali is 984 feet long, by comparison), causing $500,000 in damage in 1980 and, earlier that year, a ship had knocked down the Sunshine Skyway Bridge near Tampa, killing 35 people. At the time, a Maryland official said that if the Key Bridge or Bay Bridge suffered a similarly direct hit, those bridges, too, would collapse.

A Baltimore Sun article in May 1980 noted “a repeat of the Tampa Bay collision could happen in the Chesapeake Bay.”

“It would be foolish to say no,” George Quick, the president of the Association of Maryland Pilots, said at the time, according to The Sun.

So, the threat of calamity had been known since at least then with a renewed focus coming in the early 2000s. Both Glendening and members of the Ehrlich administration noted that leaders in the years since could also have installed better protections.

Engineers have differed as to whether a fortified pier protection system could have stopped the inconceivably forceful cargo ship from collapsing the span. This summer, the Maryland Transportation Authority said it was exploring a project to boost pier protection of the Bay Bridge by winter 2027-28. The initial budget is $145 million.

That’s a substantial chunk of money. And with transportation projects, like anything, cost is always a factor.

“We didn’t kill it. We didn’t turn it down. We never said this is a bad idea,” Flanagan said of the early 2000s reports. “It was a question of finding a place in the budget to work on it and unfortunately no one did.”

Glendening said he still has a “genuine concern” of huge cargo ships causing further damage to infrastructure. If he “could wave some kind of magic policy wand,” he said, he would retrofit “our most endangered bridges” with protections and, in some cases, simply rebuild them.

The transportation authority plans to identify the builder of the replacement Key Bridge by Labor Day and the construction project is anticipated to cost $1.7 billion, which will be primarily, if not fully, federally funded. It is expected to have more robust pier protection than the old span.

Baltimore Sun reporter Dana Munro contributed to this article.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and threats to California’s Golden Gate Bridge in November 2001, consultants studied potential threats to five bridges in the state of Maryland. Two Key Bridge-focused reports from 2002 and 2004 “recommended countermeasures to mitigate the [bridge’s] intentional destruction” and prompted a “feasibility study” for “pier protection” at the bridge, according to two studies and one slideshow from the time, obtained Friday evening by The Baltimore Sun in a Maryland Public Information Act request filed in May.

Pier protection is any structural fortification at or around a bridge support designed to prevent or mitigate a collision.

These studies — although heavily redacted — shed light on what state officials knew about the bridge’s potential susceptibility decades before it was decimated on March 26 by a 984-foot container ship named the Dali. The collapse killed six construction workers who had been fixing potholes on Interstate 695 and sent 50,000 tons of debris into the Patapsco River, blocking the shipping channel for months.

“Small-scale pier protection” at five bridges — the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the Thomas J. Hatem Bridge, the Millard Tydings Bridge, the Harry W. Nice Bridge and the Key Bridge — was evaluated in 2001 and 2002, according to the slideshow.

The reports and slideshow were completed by engineering consultants Ammann & Whitney Consulting Engineers, which performed a site visit at the Key Bridge in April 2002, and Wallace Montgomery & Associates. They provided the documents to the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owns the five spans, including the Key Bridge.

The vast majority of the slideshow and reports’ 160 pages were redacted before the transportation authority provided the documents to The Sun, but the remaining words offer hints into the studies. Subsections of the 2002 analysis into the Key Bridge include: “identification of possible threats,” feasible security measures for “ship impact,” and feasible security measures for “explosive threats.”

The documents were redacted, in part, the transportation authority said, because releasing the information could “jeopardize the security of transportation facilities and/or structures, aid in the planning of a terrorist attack, or endanger the safety of MDTA employees and the public.”

Former Maryland transportation officials have said that, after 9/11, there were concerns about terrorists targeting the Key or Bay Bridge, and the early 2000s reports seem to focus on an intentional act, rather than an accident. The 2004 study includes a page from a 1946 analysis — written by multiple federal defense agencies created during World War II — entitled “Effects of Impact and Explosion.”

The Dali, which was guided by two Maryland harbor pilots, did not intend to crash into the Key Bridge, but lost power as it departed Baltimore. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, is focused on the “electrical power distribution system” of the vessel.

One unredacted phrase from the 2004 report reads, “feasibility study for stand-off pier protection at the Francis Scott Key Bridge.” An example of “stand-off pier protection,” City College of New York civil engineering professor Anil Agrawal told The Sun Friday, is a “dolphin,” which is an artificial island built to deflect wayward ships.

Roughly 4,000 vessels transited under the Key Bridge annually, the 2002 study noted, and the Key Bridge did have four dolphins, meant to protect the span’s piers. However, they were built, like the bridge, in 1977, and were small and inadequate by modern standards, given the exponential increase in ship sizes in recent decades.

It appears that the price of additional pier protection was studied, too. The slideshow notes a “cost/benefit evaluation,” with unredacted bullet points including, “available detours,” “user costs” and “replacement costs.”

At the time of the first report, Democrat Parris Glendening was the governor of Maryland. In 2003, Republican Bob Ehrlich took office, serving until 2007.

Glendening, in an interview with The Sun on Saturday, said he generally recalled the study that took place toward the end of his second term and thought about it when the bridge collapse occurred. The inaction, he said, was likely due to the quantity of safety concerns and corresponding studies in separate state government entities taking place at the time.

“The terrorist threat was very real in my mind and other people’s mind,” Glendening said, adding what an attack in Maryland could look like was impossible to predict but all departments were doing what they could to examine how to mitigate it.

Lots of studies were done around various threats, but few made it past that stage, he said, adding that a more comprehensive safety plan was called for and never occurred.

“I think we should have been much more aggressive,” he said, and put in place “a multi-administration and multi-level government effort.

“A lot of it was start and stop, studies and discussions but very little real action,” said Glendening, who served two terms as Maryland governor starting in 1995.

Robert Flanagan, who served as the state’s transportation secretary from 2003 to 2007, said he doesn’t recall specific studies about bridge protection, nor does he know whether the Maryland Transportation Authority pushed for action. However, he does remember the enormous demands placed on the department in the aftermath of 9/11 and the need and expense associated with meeting new and evolving federal transportation safety requirements as well as developing state regulations during this time.

“We were all on pins and needles worrying about vulnerabilities of the transportation system,” Flanagan said. “We were concerned about transit. We were concerned about airports and we were concerned about bridges like this one and we were always trying to fortify ourselves.”

He recalled many aircraft regulation projects during that period, as well as concern around the port and what kinds of products could traverse international waters. Certain extra safety measures were put in place to ensure all incoming cargo was safe, which Flanagan partly credits for the lack of disasters related to the port.

“That was a huge effort that was underway and very expensive,” Flanagan said. “Before 9/11 we’d just let the stuff in and then all of a sudden we had to have all this information about a container and where it came from.”

When administrations turn over, outgoing state officials brief incoming ones on projects that didn’t get started in the prior term, Flanagan said, adding that subsequent governors and state transportation leadership officials likely possessed the information in the studies and also chose not to undertake the kinds of measures offered within them.

While Flanagan could not speak directly to any specific study, he said that cost would have been a factor in any decision.

“We didn’t kill it. We didn’t turn it down. We never said this is a bad idea. It was a question of finding a place in the budget to work on it and unfortunately no one did,” Flanagan said.

The reports were not the last time that agencies in Maryland considered stronger pier protection at the Key Bridge.

The Port of Baltimore Harbor Coordination and Safety Committee — a cross section of government agencies and maritime groups that do not have decision-making authority, but serves as a forum for quarterly discussions — has discussed the possibility of a ship hitting either the Key Bridge or Bay Bridge several times in the last two decades.

During a 2007 meeting, attendees discussed the potential of non-physical pier protection at three Maryland bridges, “based on a 2003 feasibility study for Bridge pier protection,” according to meeting minutes. At that time, one Maryland harbor pilot, Joe Smith, “reiterated his concern that the bridges should be retrofitted with enhanced bridge protection systems to prevent damage resulting from a potential ship strike.”

Cost is inherent with any transportation project, though, and the price of protection was discussed in a 2014 meeting, during which attendees noted Maryland is one of the “few states” that does not protect its bridges from “ship strikes,” per the minutes. Pilots suggested “any protection would have an economic value,” while a Coast Guard official, John Walters, said that “protecting bridges from ship strikes would cost Maryland a substantial amount of money.” A Maryland Port Administration official suggested at the time he would look into a “FEMA grant as a potential funding source.”

Adding pier protection to an existing bridge is not inexpensive and it took decades for local officials to identify funds for a $95 million project to build dolphins for the Delaware Memorial Bridge near Wilmington. Calamity is costly, too, as the new Key Bridge’s price tag is roughly $1.7 billion, a figure that does not compute the disaster’s impact on the region’s economy, nor the six men who died in the collapse.

The replacement Key Bridge is expected to have a wider main span — placing the piers farther from the shipping channel, thus lowering the risk of vessel collision — and likely some sort of physical barriers, such as islands, protecting the piers. By Labor Day, the transportation authority plans to identify the contracted builder of the new bridge.

The authority is considering adding pier protection at the Bay Bridge, too, by the 2027-28 winter. The initial budget for the project is $145 million.

Back when the Key Bridge was studied in 2002, the consultant analysis noted the potential consequences of a bridge closure. Two decades later, those ramifications became an all-too-horrible, and ongoing, reality.

“The detour length for the bridge, in the event of a bridge closing[,] is approximately 25 miles,” the 2002 report stated. “The bridge is a vital link in the Maryland highway system and its importance to the economy of the region is critical.”