Posted on March 26, 2025
The National Transportation Safety Board recommended that 30 owners of 68 bridges across 19 states conduct a vulnerability assessment to determine the risk of bridge collapse from a vessel collision, including four spans over the Delaware River.
The NTSB made its recommendations in a report Thursdah as the nation approaches the first anniversary of the catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which killed six people in Baltimore on March 26, 2024.
The Key Bridge collapsed after a freighter, the Dali, lost power and slammed into support pier, sending the bridge into the water along with an overnight pothole patching crew.
The agency’s report lists four Delaware River bridges among those nationwide that, like the Key Bridge, lack a “vulnerability assessment” of collapse.
The bridges are:
Walt Whitman, connecting Philadelphia with Gloucester City, New Jersey,
Ben Franklin, connecting the Philadelphia with Camden, New Jersey,
Betsy Ross, connecting Philadelphia with Pennsauken, New Jersey, and
Delaware River Turnpike Bridge, connecting Pennsylvania in Bristol Township to New Jersey in Florence.
The Delaware River Port Authority owns the first three bridges, the last is owned jointly by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
Both turnpike agencies are studying whether the bridge, opened in 1956, should be refurbished or replaced, and held its first public information session in Bristol Township on March 19.
The NTSB stressed that none of the four bridges are in danger of collapse or are unsafe to cross.
Rather, the spans made the list because none have been evaluated as safe from collapse in a ship collision under calculations adopted in the 1990s by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO.
Over the last year, the NTSB identified 68 bridges that were designed before the AASHTO guidance was established — like the Key Bridge — that do not have a current vulnerability assessment. The recommendations are issued to bridge owners to calculate the annual frequency of collapse for their bridges using an AASHTO calculation.
Messages left with the Turnpike Commission and the Delaware River Port Authority were not immediately returned on Friday.
