President Biden vowed Tuesday to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after it collapsed into the water when a cargo ship rammed into it, echoing what some Maryland officials said earlier but adding that he expects the federal government to foot the bill.

“It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “This is going to take some time, but the people of Baltimore can count on us though to stick with them at every step of the way until the port is reopen and the bridge is rebuilt.”

He said he spoke with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Tuesday morning, as well as Maryland officials including its congressional delegation and two U.S. senators. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled to the Baltimore site.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I’m pretty sure they were going to do that with or without him. the party responsible for the incident should be the one fitting the bill

    • tiramichu@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Yes, but ascertaining liability and securing a payout is a process that may take many years of being dragged through the courts, if it is even successful at all.

      The government making money available immediately does help get things going with less uncertainty about who can foot the bill.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Bridges are fucking expensive, I’m not certain if the government will be able to recover a significant portion of the cost.

    • popcap200@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Someone doesn’t remember the 9/11 responder funding, hurricane funding, the rhetoric around COVID funding, etc. etc.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Footing the bill… but yes. Then again, maybe with the amount of shipping traffic a tunnel makes more sense.

      • jwhardcastle@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        We have two nearby tunnels. They’ll be packed now. But hazmat trucks and larger oversized vehicles can’t go through tunnels. There’s also a longer way around the northwest of the city, but that’ll be crowded now too. That’s where everyone lives. The bridge over the river was the interstate trucking corridor from DC to Philly up to New York and Boston.

      • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        The problem was the boat. It has done this kind of shit before in 2016.

        • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          The problem was the boat.

          … and the bridge. Evidently there’s no safety structure around the support that would have prevented a ship from hitting the bridge.

          • Garbanzo@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            They thought about installing bumpers but decided it was too expensive. Gotta wonder how the cost compares to replacing the whole fucking bridge.

            • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Remember everything seems obvious in hindsight. I’m sure there’s a significant number of bridges with no bumpers have operated without incident for their lifetimes.

              • Garbanzo@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                A significant number of bridges that would block a major port if they collapsed? I doubt it.

                • pmmeyourtits@ani.social
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                  9 months ago

                  Pretty sure the HRBT down in Hampton roads could cause such a blockage. We live in a capitalistic society, why spend a dollar to protect for a risk that could only happen once every couple hundred thousand ships tends to be the usual thought process unfortunately.

                  • Sconrad122@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    That’s actually exactly why it (and the MMBT and the CBBT) is a bridge tunnel, so that a failure cannot block the port, military base, and shipyards

            • Billiam@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              …this is a joke, right? I don’t know anything about bridge engineering or shipping, but what kind of bumper could stop a couple-million-pound ship, even if it was unpowered?

              • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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                9 months ago

                Probably a large fender system designed to get the ship to slow down by breaking apart to absorb the energy.

                • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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                  9 months ago

                  Do you understand HOW BIG it needs to be and how deep the anchoring need to be to do that? It would be more expensive than building the bridge to not have single points of failure

                  • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    Every bridge in the SF Bay Area has fenders and the Bay Bridge had a container ship hit the fenders. The bridge was unaffected but the ship had a hole torn in it which led to a huge oil spill (Cosco-Busan oil spill). Repairing the fender itself only took 1 month and $1.5 million. IMO any bridge that ships pass under it needs appropriately sized fenders for those ships.

                  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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                    9 months ago

                    It will be a very big system, but it will be cheaper than building double the piers as you described.

                    And it is still common today to design bridges with single points of failure today. You just increase the factor of safety for it.

                  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    Presumably it would mostly redirect any ship, rather than try to just stop it. Or if it’s possibly to build shallows around it, you can use the weight of the ship against it

              • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                The fenders on the SF Bay Bridge have successfully prevented damage to the bridge twice so far. Every bridge in the SF Bay Area has fenders to prevent exactly what happened in Baltimore. They work.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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            9 months ago

            It was a 70’s bridge built to take collisions from 70’s boats of 1/3 the weight.