Francis Scott Key Bridge Disaster
Some interesting tidbits.
There was quite a bit of commentary in Tuesday’s Forum about the awful news that a barge crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge near Baltimore, taking out some key infrastructure for the foreseeable future. Given how little know about commercial shipping, bridge architecture, and maritime search and rescue, I saw no real need to weigh in. Indeed, it’s not even clear which of the many categories we’ve created over the last two decades-plus that I’d file it under.
Still, side from the tragic loss of life and the massive disruption that this will cause, a few things seem noteworthy.
First and foremost, the sheer readiness of people to spin off wild conspiracy theories and racist nonsense. Axios (“Misinformation runs rampant after Baltimore bridge collapse“):
Why it matters: Rampant misinformation during mass casualty events is not a new phenomenon. But under Elon Musk’s ownership of X, the platform has changed from an essential real-time news source to a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
Driving the news: Federal and state authorities said Tuesday there’s no evidence that terrorism played a role in the collapse of the 1.6 mile-long bridge, which was struck by a container ship at around 1:30am ET Tuesday.
[…]
What they’re saying: “Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident. At this time, we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there’s any intentional act here,” President Biden said in remarks Tuesday afternoon.
Zoom in: Within hours, X accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers were promoting baseless claims that the Dali had been the victim of a cyber-attack or had intentionally rammed into the bridge.
- Much of the misinformation was being pushed by “verified” users who pay for a premium subscription that boosts their posts.
- Some verified right-wing accounts speculated that corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives were to blame for the disaster — a claim also embraced during a spate of recent aircraft safety issues.
- Several antisemitic accounts with blue check marks claimed that the “attack” was perpetrated by Israel.
The terrorism speculation was at least understandable given the constant stream of threats from the usual suspects, especially in the wake of US support for Israel in the brutal war in Gaza. The DEI and Israel theories are, at best, nutty and, at worst, pure racist bullshit.
In other political news, President Biden argues that federal taxpayers should be on the hook for cleaup and rebuild. NBC:
President Joe Biden said he wants the federal government to pay to rebuild the Baltimore bridge that collapsed early Tuesday after a large cargo ship sailed straight into one of the bridge’s support pillars.
“We’re going to work with our partners in Congress to make sure the state gets the support it needs. 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 brief remarks from the White House before he left for North Carolina.
Biden said that it will take “some time” to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which transverses the Patapsco River, but that he told Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, that he’s directing the federal government to “move heaven and earth” to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge “as soon as humanly possible.”
[…]
The Port of Baltimore, one of the largest shipping hubs in the U.S., is the top port in America for both imports and exports of automobiles and light trucks, Biden said, noting that 850,000 vehicles are moved through the port annually.
“We’re going to get it up and running again as soon as possible. … Fifteen thousand jobs depend on that port, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect those jobs and help those workers,” he said.
He also said that the bridge is “critical for travel,” not just for Baltimore but for the Northeast Corridor, saying more than 30,000 vehicles cross it daily.
I think this is the right instinct, although with some significant caveats. Right in that the Federal government has the ability to marshall resources quickly and that repair is vital from a national, not merely a local perspective.
On the other hand, the bridge is a Maryland state highway, and one that collects tolls, no less. It seems reasonable that they should pay part of the cost of this revenue producer. That’s especially true if a private contractor maintains the roads in exchange for a cut of the fees. (I haven’t the foggiest whether they are; it is true for many of the toll roads in Northern Virginia.)
Moreover, this calamity was caused by a private company. While the captain is rightly being lauded for quickly informing authorities, allowing traffic to be stopped and thus likely saving countless lives, if the investigation shows that there was negligence on the part of the company, then they (and, by extension, their insurance company) certainly ought to be held liable to the extent possible. Notably, this is not the first time this particular vessel has had an accident. USA Today:
This was not the Dali’s first harsh encounter with a pier, and that time its leadership was determined to be at fault. It’s too early to know what caused Tuesday’s accident.
The cargo ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge collided with a shipping dock in Belgium in 2016. That incident occurred as the Dali was leaving port in Antwerp and hit a loading pier made of stone, causing damage to the ship’s stern, according to the VesselFinder.com website, which tracks ships across the world. An investigation determined a mistake made by the ship’s master and pilot was to blame.
My purely amateur speculation at this point is that the captain the Key Bridge incident did an exemplary job under the circumstances but that the ship was not maintained to standard. A Reuters report provides some evidence for that:
An inspection in 2023 carried out in Chile found “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” deficiencies, according to data on the Equasis public website, which provides information on ships.
But Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority said in a statement that the vessel passed two separate foreign-port inspections in June and September 2023. It said a faulty fuel pressure gauge was rectified before the vessel departed the port following its June 2023 inspection.
If so, the US taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for all the damages.
Also interesting. According to an AP report, at least four of the six workers killed from the bridge collapse are from Latin America:
The six missing people were part of a construction crew filling potholes on the bridge, said Paul Wiedefeld, the state’s transportation secretary.
Guatemala’s consulate in Maryland said in a statement that two of the missing were citizens of the Central American nation. It did not provide their names but said consular officials were in contact with authorities and assisting the families.
Honduras’ Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio García told The Associated Press that a Honduran citizen, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, was missing. He said he had been in contact with Suazo’s family.
And the Washington Consulate of Mexico said via the social media platform X that citizens of that nation were also among the missing. It did not say how many.
Since I haven’t seen this shouted from the rooftops, I presume they were all here legally. Still, it would give the impression that the crew was mostly, if not entirely, foreign born.
Finally, this incident should renew focus on our failing infrastructure. We’ve spent decades talking about the state of our bridges but really haven’t invested much money into fixing the problem. Presumably, this particular bridge was in good shape. But, while it’s apparently nearly impossible to design one that can withstand a full-on collision from a massive vessel, there are mitigation measures (“dolphins” and other barriers) that could have been in place that weren’t.
Relatedly, as at least one commenter noted in the Open Forum discussions, it’s dangerous to have a whole region of the country so dependent on a single bridge. We really need to build in more redundancy.
I had the same thoughts flitting through my head, the optics might not harm Biden by his saying in the immediate aftermath of this event that the Fed Government (aka, us taxpayers, I added a few hundred to the Fed’s till a few days back when I filed my tax returns) will step up but I did think hey, someone is going to have to turn to the folks who own the ship for renumeration of at least a good chunk of the funds that will needed to make this incident right.
The families of the workers who were killed are due some money, someone has to pay for all the equipment, manpower, etc., that went into the search and rescue effort, just removing the broken pieces of the bridge is going to be a mega task and take a lot of time and money, and eventually we get to the very expensive project of rebuilding this bridge.
The lawsuits will be coming like a freight train at the shipping company soon enough, and rightfully so, unless something freaky like a lightning strike caused power to go out on the ship and it went off course and hit the bridge, or something like that, the ship captain and owners are not off the hook.
I overheard a woman in a waiting room today reporting to her neighbor that “the older people in the [rural] bar where [she works] were deep into the conspiracies” about the bridge incident already last night and our reporter (who I am just gonna say may have peddled a few conspiracies in her life) was nothing but eye rolls about the immediacies and nuttiness of her patrons.
If it had been terrorism, the incident would have taken place during rush hour.
While accident investigations tend not to be punitive, there are always liability issues that are resolved in the courts, not part of the investigations. So, yes, the federal government can sue the ship’s owners for damages.
Now, maritime law is a bitch. So, can the government collect in a successful lawsuit?
Lastly, there’s one thing I hadn’t thought about. Structures are designed for various loads* and conditions, as they exist at the time of design. This should be obvious, but often gets overlooked. This bridge dates from the 70s. Container ships were in use then, but they were much smaller than they are today.
You cannot design for all future contingencies, likely and not, but structures can, and should, be upgraded if significant load increases pose a higher risk.
There’s an overpass I often take on my way home from work. It was built in 2010 or so. When I get on it and traffic is bumper to bumper from start to finish, I wonder whether the engineers who designed took into account SUVs, school buses, and diverse freight trucks.
They probably did. For sure they took earthquakes into account. Just the same, I get a bit nervous when traffic is bad on it.
*Load is a technical term applying to all forces that act on a structure. Wind is a load, for example, and an important one. See what wind did to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Accidents happen – that’s why roads have guardrails, even if they aren’t needed 99.999% of the time.
Considering the example of the Florida Skyway bridge collapse in 1980, it’s negligence, in my opinion, that vulnerable bridge piers are still not protected from errant ships. Looking at the before pictures of this bridge, the piers had no protection at all. If anything, it’s surprising this hasn’t happened sooner.
I don’t have any inherent problem with the federal government helping to pay to rebuild a new bridge, or at the very least providing very generous loan guarantees, but I sure hope the feds are looking at all the bridges around the country and ensuring those with vulnerable piers are properly protected.
That’s been a trend in construction for a while. My brother still runs the family construction business, although at 72 he’s getting ready to retire. His fluency in Spanish is a daily advantage as a significant part of the workforce are immigrants.
@Kathy:
There is some concern, not all of it politically motivated, about the weight of electric vehicles on parking structures, bridges, and such. I recall reading some years ago about San Francisco organizing a day when they shut down the Golden Gate to vehicle traffic and invited people to walk across it. Some engineering types looked at the pictures of people shoulder to shoulder and heel to toe all the way over and across the roadway and declared don’t ever do that again. The weight was higher than with any normal vehicle traffic.
On the other hand, I’ve seen the claim that with bridges you don’t worry much about vehicles. The payload of vehicles is small compared to the weight of the bridge. If it’ll hold itself up, it’ll hold up whatever you put on it. But the weight of EVs will be cutting into safety margins.
I wouldn’t assume Biden’s statement means the US government will not try to recover funds from the vessel’s bond* and/or ownership. That’s a process that may take a decade to play out and replacing that bridge needs immediate funding.
*For what that’s worth. While some bonding is required by international maritime law, it’s exceedingly unlikely it’s for enough to build a bridge like that.
It is not impossible, it is simply irrationally uneconomical to execute such over-engineering and would not be a good use of resources nor money. Cost-Benefit risk analysis.
I think the Feds can have a financial role in speeding up the cleanup and rebuild process even if the Dali and it’s ownership is found liable and has the cash (with its insurance) to make it all good, monetarily speaking.
Because such litigation could drag out for a long time, and I would not like to see all the efforts to clean up and rebuild stalled for that long a time. I think that the Feds could help with this and recover damages. Who knows, it might actually end up being a small gain.
You want redundancy when we won’t even fix the bridges, tunnels, water supply systems, etc., that are in serious need of repair?
@gVOR10:
The EV matter is part of what I mean, though I didn’t know EVs are heavier. To a common person, all cars of the same size seem the same. But, yeah, it can make a big difference if an EV sedan weight, what, 20% more than a regular car.
On bridges, I often think of the Hyatt skywalk in Kansas City
On yesterday’s open thread, there was much talk that it’s impossible to stop a container ship quickly. This is so. But is there a way for a protective structure to absorb some or much of the kinetic energy so the bridge will deal with less? Say so it’s badly damaged and needs weeks of repairs, but doesn’t collapse.
@Kathy: Something I’ve been reading about is the possibility of much larger islands on which the bridge supports rest, and shaping such islands so that they will deflect oncoming ships rather than stop them.
I don’t know that I feel all that critical of the designers of Key Bridge, since it was 50+ years ago, and ships were much smaller then.
First the ship lost power and it appears they lost all power; propulsion and generators. The maritime channels are speculating it could be due to the “bad” fuel common after the IMO imposed new fuel standards a couple years ago. The issue is plastics in the diesel that used to dissolve in the high-sulfur fuel. It remains to be seen if that contributed.
On the shore side, those pylons supporting that bridge had no protection from collision (strictly an allision as it was a moving vessel with a fixed object) except for a narrow barrier likely more to keep the current off the pylons. From the video, it looks like the flare of the Dali’s bow was able to reach the angled pylons (4 angled like a sawhorse). Dolphins further out along the channel could have kept the distance.
If there is “scandal” it will likely be long delayed plans to install such dolphins.
It does appear that the pilots had a plan for a failure in this area. The pilot immediately ordered port rudder, even though the ship was on the north side of the channel. Likely it was common for a starboard veer where the power went out due to the loss of bow cushion from the channel as the Curtis Creek channel intersected. A small quirk in normal conditions. He also immediately called emergency initiating the shutdown of the bridge. Which seems to have worked as it looks like the only casualties are those working on the bridge. Two semis make it across seconds before the strike. I suspect we’ll find that this a long trained emergency procedure of the pilot association for this location in the channel, with the hope of grounding a dead ship in the out of the way north shallows.
As for rebuilding, that’s going to be long while. First priority is to clear the channel, for commerce, NG exports, and the 3 MSC pre-positioning ships now trapped in the port (making it a national security issue). the USACE has already announced movement to dredge an emergency channel. It’s going to take time to move the dredging assets, much less the salvage assets that are likely coming from Europe for a job this big.
@gVOR10: @gVOR10:
The bridge was closed to traffic for its 50th anniversary in 1987 and people were invited to walk across it. Absolute lunacy. Almost a million people showed up. The people walking from SF and the people walking from the Marin side met in the middle.
It is truly lucky that no one was trampled to death. The weight of all those people actually flattened out the arched roadbed. It is incredibly lucky that the roadbed had been replaced a few years earlier with what were then modern materials, considerably lowering the weight of the roadbed.
Some of the engineers who insisted, after the fact, that there had been no danger of a collapse admitted – off the record – that if this stunt had been tried on the original roadbed, a collapse, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, would have been a real possibility.
A lot of my friends and co-workers went. I spent a very pleasant day at Pt. Reyes, far away from this idiocy.
https://www.sfgate.com/local-donotuse/article/golden-gate-bridge-walk-1987-anniversary-disaster-13896571.php
This is the kind of thing you need superheroes for. Superman, obviously. Magneto if he were feeling generous.
The Golden Gate and Bay Bridges are pretty robust. They need to be able to withstand earthquakes. The south tower of the GG Bridge has a very substantial barrier around it, the north tower is anchored on land.
We did have a scary incident in 2007 when a large container ship hit one of the west side fenders on the Bay Bridge. Fortunately, it did its job.
I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in the Richmond Bridge, we really need to get a replacement for it going, and deal with the unreliable 37 connector between the east and north bay. Also the lack of a rail connection serving those areas.
@Michael Reynolds:
That ship probably massed around 120,000 tonnes; moving downriver at several knots. If that kind of kinetic force hits anything short of a BIG reinforced concrete bastion, with deep pilings fixing said bastion to the river bed, it’s going to demolish it.
Yeah James, starting with calling a 984 foot long ship a “barge”.
Having grown up on the banks of the Mississippi, I am very familiar with barges. They are NOT 984 feet long. 😉 😉
@anjin-san:
I’ve already wondered idly if the replacement bridge will be a different design that can provide a longer center span and move the supports much farther from the shipping channels.
According to CNN; in 1980 a container ship hit the same bridge, and the damage was relatively minor (it certainly didn’t collapse).
So, yeah, container ships have grown bigger.
The piece says there were protections around the bridge’s supports. evidently these were not adequate.
The other salient matter now, is to asses the protection of other bridges that stand in the path of heavy ship traffic, and whether these can withstand a similar impact without causing the bridge to collapse.
@Andy:
It was protected they call them “dolphins” and the ship hit perfectly to miss it. I’m not really sure how well they would of handled a loaded modern container ship.
You can see them in the NTSB drone footage available here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgOHpZlxvc
Do keep in mind the Dali has a cargo capacity of 116,851 tons while the ship itself has a gross weight of 95,128 tons. Corporate profits/economics has resulted in these massive ships having one engine and one screw.
https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9697428
Modern ships are absolutely GIGANTIC compared to what shipping looked like in the 70s when that bridge was built. Most bridges suffer from the same issue and attempts to address that are usually shot down by the GOP. Some work is being done but it’s hamstrung by the lack of funding due to the GOP…. Cause you know infrastructure repair/upgrades must be opposed because the democratic party supports it and it might raise taxes a wee bit…
The MDTA is
@JKB: As usual JKB is pretty much full of shit. He’s sprinkled a few truths in there. Low sulfur bunker fuel became a requirement in jan 1 2020 under MARPOL Annex VI. There are ways to still use high sulfur bunker fuel while staying compliant such as installing scrubbers.
It wasn’t bad fuel (1.8 million gallons in the Dali) much more likely it was bad maintenance because these ships are under serious time constraints. Half ass repairs are the order of the day because it saves money. Assuming they don’t just ignore the issue because it’s not considered important enough.
@Matt:
I have such a mean and funny comment for that, but I want to refrain myself from needless vulgarity.
Besides, the real reason the Dali crashed and took out the bridge, is there was no good guy with a gun to stop it.
@matt:
You had me until you started blaming it all on the GoP and corporate profits. If you have something specific that was “shot down” by the GoP, then let’s hear it, but that would be a surprise to me, considering the bridge is owned by the State government and Maryland has been a Democratic-dominated state for at least the last three decades.
The ship experts I’ve read have theorized the problem wasn’t the main engine or single screw, but the diesel generators going out and the backups also failing, which is why you see the power cut out in the video, come back on, and the cut out again. Those generators power the hydraulics for the steering. The speculation is a fuel pressure delivery problem, but obviously, we’ll learn the truth in the investigation.
I’ve read that an alternative safety measure being discussed besides protecting the pylons better is to ensure that all ships of a certain size have tugboat support when passing underneath bridges, which makes a lot of sense, but will obviously need more tugboat capacity.
@Andy:
I blamed it on the reality of the shipping industry. If you don’t like that then feel free to advocate for whatever change you feel necessary.
The build back better plan had provisions for upgrading and repairing bridges. There’s a slew of other bills that GOP has shot down over the last couple decades but I’m not going to waste my time citing every one of them just for you to play your usual goal post movement or misrepresentation of what I said.
The bridge is owned/operated by the MDTA which is an independent state agency designed to operate as a commercial operation. Because you know the private for profit industry always does things better and all those talking points. The MDTA was founded in 1971 when Maryland was quite red with republican representing the people of the state in both the house and senate. How red? 72 it went for nixon at 61.26%.
I never said it was the one screw and engine that was the cause of the accident. Having only one screw and engine though made it vastly more difficult to recover.
Do you know what the leading cause of backups failing is? Lack of proper maintenance and other cost cutting…
Well excluding the reality that incidents have still occurred with tugboat assistance (sometimes because of said tug boats) I’m not sure there’s even enough tug boats to institute such a policy on every major harbor bridge. Who is going to pay for all that extra cost? It’s the same idea behind protecting the bridge better. Sure we can harden the bridge to handle a freighter impacting it but who wants to spend the extra billions for a once in +50 year event? Cost benefit analysis and all that stuff..
Clearly, you are a Democrat, if not a socialist. Taxing people in order to pay for public goods is un-Christian, un-American, and probably woke as well.
I thought of the Commodore Barry Bridge, which I occasionally cross, on the Delaware River between PA and NJ. Like the Key Bridge, it’s a high truss-type bridge that accommodates large ship traffic. And it’s not really that far from the Key Bridge via the C&D Canal. TIL that, following a 2005 study by the Port Authority, large rock islands were added around the base of the two major piers of the Barry. The view from above shows the rock islands are about 300 ft long, and the span between them is relatively wide.
The other bridges on the Delaware River between the Philly ports and the bay are suspension bridges, which although not invulnerable, should be much more robust than the Key or the Barry due to having massive tower bases on massive piers, and also having more space between the piers. Nevertheless, one of them, the Delaware Memorial, is in the process of getting 8 of the so-called dolphins (big ones) to protect the piers. The two other suspension bridges (in the city) have piers on or near the river bank in shallow water.
As for the liability issue with the Key Bridge disaster, Secretary Pete seems to be putting it on the shipping company and/or operator, for which I can’t blame him. During today’s press conference, he more than once said that no bridge reinforcement could have protected the bridge from that ship traveling at that speed. Despite that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the eventual conclusion is that the Key Bridge was especially vulnerable to due to the size and amount of ship traffic, bridge type, inadequacy of protective structures, and the relatively narrow span. A quick bird’s-eye look at other major east coast ports shows some ports accessible without passing bridges (tunnels and/or no crossings), some with bridges having obvious collision protection structures, and some with bridge supports not vulnerable due to being on or next to shore.
Back in Charm City, some avenues of liability seemed to open up when CNN interviewed a woman who works for a cargo company at the Port of Baltimore, and she clearly wanted to share observations that the Dali had been having electrical problems for a couple days and that it should not have left port at that time. An expert mariner was asked to comment her statements, and said that the ship Pilot should have had a checklist and been informed of any issues with the operation of the ship. I wonder how long before we see NTSB reporting on any of this.
@DrDaveT: When I “blame” the GOP it’s that mindset I’m talking about. No matter how blue your state is you’re still going to have to pander some to that mindset. So it creeps into the policies of even the “lefties” as “common sense” which the mainstream media helps push as their few corporate overlords demand (media ownership concentration in the USA has gotten bad). I’ve met a lot of democratic voters with various levels of that mindset over my years. We can’t tax the rich it’s not fair!! Meanwhile the rich owners privatize the profits while socializing the losses.
It’s been mind blowing to talk to some people who live in areas that were outright destroyed/poisoned by private industry. The shell corporations close down and the owners who made all the choices walk away with millions/billions and no responsibility at all. Yet you’ll still find people living there who will defend it all…
Seriously though I’m pretty sure most people here would be horrified to see the state of disrepair of these working ships. Even the ships that are relatively well taken care of have issues due to the schedules they have to follow.
@Matt:
Yeah, I got that. We’re on the same page here.
I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations over the years with colleagues of mine who are U. Chicago economists. Most of them will agree that the purpose of government is to take advantage of economies of scale and internalize externalities for the common good. The disagreements start when you ask whether that means ALL externalities and ALL economies of scale…
So I work in a semi-related field, mainframe computers. And we see this often when there are failures, which, like this, are very rare, but catastrophic when they do happen. You have this thing that is absolutely fundamental to the operation of your city, or civilization, that sixty years ago was amazing, but has now faded into the background, because it just works, and has been there for decades, plugging away.
And over time, the environment that the system is working in changes. It gets busier, transaction rates/sizes keep growing, but it’s not going to be a problem, because it never has been before. Often the people making the decisions about, say, increasing the size of container ships don’t even know to think about what increasing ship sizes might impact the bridge. Usually you have the folks who are intimately familiar with the infrastructure who are concerned, but they are ignored, or told their concerns will be addressed in the future, which never comes. Until suddenly you hit a tipping point, and everything fails spectacularly.
The real problem is that infrastructure just isn’t sexy; no one gets press or awards for keeping things going.
@Kevin:
The M/V Dali is neoPanamax which is 50′ wider than Panamax. That means, if they designed barrier around the bridge pylons to be far enough out for Panamax in the 1970s, the Dali had another 25′ of flare on each sid from stem to maindeck. And that looks like what happened. The main damage to the ship is to the bow at the main deck. Here is some NTSB video of the ship damage as Sal Mercogliano, historian at Campbell University and former merchant mariner discusses the bureaucratic complexities of the salvage operations.
The ship size threat to infrastructure should have been considered when they modified the container cranes to handle the bigger ships. I don’t think post-Panamax ships can be handled in Baltimore.
That is not the case.
@Matt:
The shipping industry is a global enterprise.
For example, let’s pick one ship at random: The MV Dali belongs to Singapore-based Grace Ocean Pte Ltd, which some group owns out of Hong Kong. It was carrying Maersk (A Danish company) containers. The ship was operated by a different Singapore-based company and, at the time of the accident, was being controlled by two Port of Baltimore pilots.
Undoubtedly. As I just laid out, this ship does not have any US affiliation; therefore, there is little US regulatory control over its maintenance practices, much less the ability to inspect its material condition. You note cost-benefit analysis at the end of your comment – we could certainly require a full inspection of every ship before it leaves a US port, but it’s questionable that would pass a cost-benefit test.
So I get your complaint about a lack of maintenance; what’s not obvious is your attempt to tie all these problems to the GoP and your other ideological opponents, nor is it exactly obvious what solution you think should be implemented beyond doing whatever Democrats want.
Of course, there are costs and tradeoffs, there always are. Note that I’m not advocating for tugboats or any particular mitigation strategy, I was just noting that’s what experts were discussing.
Yes, so the MDTA is a wholly state-owned enterprise. Contrary to your assertion, an independent agency is not a “private for profit industry.” The state government entirely controls it. And most every state – at least that I’m aware of – creates agencies to manage toll roads and other specific functions. They do so for various sound, practical reasons, not the evil profiteering you imply.
And then you have to go back a half-century to lay the blame for the MDTA at the feet of the GoP and, by implication, any supposed modern failures, conveniently leaving all Democrats who’ve run the state since then off the hook for any responsibility whatsoever. Talk about moving the goalposts. And I should note that it’s not even clear at this point that the MDTA has done or did anything wrong in its management of the bridge, but you can’t let that get in the way of your ideological arguments in tracing its creation to 1971 and implying that is somehow relevant to the current situation.
Well, it just gets tiresome when the first thing out of people’s mouths when there is an accident or situation like this is hand-wavy and fact-free blaming of partisan and ideological opponents before any of the facts are in. And you keep doubling down on that. And now you’re deploying the tired rhetorical trick of claiming you know of a slew of bill that would have potentially been relevant to this situation had they passed, but of course you won’t name them because I’m not honest.
The problem for your argument is that I’m not the one making claims with certainty here. Beyond the issue of the bridge peirs not having sufficient protection, my position is that we don’t yet know enough to understand why that was never done or what is the best course of action from here on out may be. You, on the other hand, immediately lept in with your conclusion that the responsibility lies with your ideological opponents while your ideological allies have no responsibility for this at all. I’m merely asking you to defend that argument with actual facts, because you could be right! There certainly could be historic legislation or some initiative about protecting bridges from ship strikes that failed because the GoP opposed it. It also could be true that the MDTA under Democratic government failed in its responsibilities. Or it could be something else. Most likely, in my opinion, it’s the kind of benign neglect that comes from status quo bias and isn’t really anyone’s fault. Whatever the case, we need some evidence, not fact-free ideologically-convenient finger-pointing.