Posted on August 4, 2025
As engineers and workers demolish what’s left of Baltimore’s Key Bridge, plans are underway for a new span that Maryland wants to open by the fall of 2028.
Officials said moving the new bridge more than 260 feet to the east will allow crews to tear one bridge down and build another at the same time. The new bridge alignment will run parallel to the old structure.
At a facility in Texas, custom designed steel piles that are eight feet in diameter are being built — those columns will form the new bridge’s foundation. They’ll be sent to Maryland on a barge later this year, then lowered into the soft Patapsco riverbed.
They will be driven into the riverbed and tested with millions of pounds of pressure as engineers verify the foundation design of the bridge in the riverbed.
The combination of the riverbed’s softness and wanting to begin building the new bridge as quickly as possible made the decision to reroute the bridge easier, officials said.
“It’s very, very loose,” said Brian Wolfe, director of project management at the Maryland Transportation Authority. “It’s upwards of what, 60, 70 feet almost, of very loose material to get to a hard layer that we can actually put our foundations into.”
Engineers also found another potential issue they’ll avoid by moving the bridge: parts of the old bridge that have sunk into the riverbed.
“There was also some debris on the far side, by the north end, that we thought we could miss as we were starting the original design. But as we progressed, we realized that it was going to be in conflict, which was going to potentially have a delay to the project,” he said. “So, by shifting or moving the alignment to the current location, to the east, it got us away from that potential conflict.”
The new bridge will also be about 50 feet higher and substantially longer, 1,665 feet between the two piers over the river shipping channel compared to 1,200 feet for the original bridge.
MDTA Executive Director Bruce Gartner said this will make it safer, allowing for much larger container ships to enter and leave the nearby Port of Baltimore.
“It was a logical process with the Coast Guard to determine we’re at a 230-foot clearance that will accommodate larger ships,” Gartner said. “You have to remember that the spans have to go farther out than these existing ones, so that makes it a bigger bridge.”
For drivers, the bridge will also be wider. The four-lane project includes inside and outside shoulders in each direction. The original bridge did not have shoulders in either direction.
Gartner said extensive precautions will be taken to safeguard the new bridge, including the design of expanded protection equipment hundreds of yards from the bridge to keep ships away from the bridge to prevent a collision, such as the one that brought down the old bridge.
“You’re going to see a compliant protection system that is a football or soccer field size structure around those main piers to help protect it from those ships,” he said. “In order to comply with those AASHTO standards for new bridges, you have to be basically a bigger main span, and you have to have more pier protection, which puts you farther out into the shipping channel.”
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association representing highway and transportation departments in the 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico. It provides significant engineering and infrastructure guidance to states.
The Key Bridge collapsed on March 26, 2024, when it was struck by a cargo ship. Six construction workers died.
It had opened on March 23, 1977, as part of Interstate 695, connecting Dundalk and Hawkins Point.
Engineers, including Gartner, said they expect this new bridge, with its price tag of nearly $2 billion, to be in service well into the next century.
“At least 75 years, but you know, we hope to do much better than that in this process,” he said.
