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Comment by edgineer | Hacker News Reader

Rebuild cost: $600m [0]

I do hope We the People have zealous advocates.

[0]https://news.sky.com/story/baltimore-trade-implications-from...

I suspect that the actual cost to rebuild the bridge will be far higher than that. Initial estimates of large public works projects are virtually always too low, and actual costs can easily be 5-10 times higher.

There is a great book about this phenomenon (and how to avoid it) by Brent Flyvbjerg called "How Big Things Get Done".

Here in Tokyo, there's a relatively new bridge that's almost exactly the same length as the Key bridge in Baltimore, and was expressly designed to allow large ships to pass underneath:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Gate_Bridge

By my calculations (using the yen cost in the wikipedia article and the JPY/USD conversion at the time), it cost about USD $1.1B, so a bit less than double this estimate.

However, with the way things get done in the US these days, I suspect your 10x prediction is much more likely.

It probably needs to be earthquake-proof too, which maybe it doesn't in Baltimore.

I suspect the winning bridge design in Baltimore is going to include massive starlings, beyond what is normal, or some other mitigation factor for the last disaster.

So maybe earthquake-proofing is a fair comparison, cost-wise.

They’re just going to put more dolphins around the pylons. They had a few already but they were poorly placed and had an opening a container ship could slip through.

"an opening a container ship could slip through" -- I'm going to use that to mock security people at my work

The cheapest option (and most profitable to tug operators) is to require that ships over a certain tonnage be tug escorted past the bridge.

It definitely needs to be earthquake-resistant; we get earthquakes here constantly.

Another interesting fact about the Tokyo Gate Bridge (from the Wikipedia article): it's basically made of 3 sections, the two sides and one smaller piece in the middle to connect them. The two side pieces are cantilevers, so they're self-supporting. So if a big container ship managed to strike one side and knock it down, theoretically the other side would remain standing, rather than the whole thing collapsing like the Baltimore bridge.

The entire project should be outsourced to a Japanese contractor. We're going to end up with a 10year $14bn bridge to nowhere, much like HSR in California.

>The entire project should be outsourced to a Japanese contractor.

You can't do that; it doesn't work that way unless perhaps you transfer ownership of all that territory to Japan.

This is a location that's on the opposite side of the planet. So you could obviously do the design work in Japan, but the construction has to happen on-site, which means

1) using local workers, and 2) dealing with local laws/regulations.

The labor force alone is hugely different between the two countries, not just the people themselves and their culture and language, but also how they're organized: contractors, subcontractors, unions, etc. A Japanese company with no experience working outside Japan would have no idea how to deal with all that.

Local laws and regulations are also an issue, since again the Japanese company would be unfamiliar with all that. In NYC, for instance, there's some crazy regulations about how many workers have to be present for stuff, which ends up driving costs up a lot. Just having a foreign company manage the project isn't going to change that stuff.

The ridiculous costs of American projects are due to many factors present in America now, and simply hiring a foreign company to manage a project isn't going to change those. America needs to fix its issues. Unlike a car or airplane, a bridge or subway isn't something you can just build offshore and transport to your country.

What helps push down prices of bridges, is to not build them in US.

Or at least, it always strikes me how outlandishly expensive infrastructure projects are in the US (for me coming from Europe, originally).

outlandishly expensive infrastructure projects are in the US

As someone in Europe I wonder where this notion comes from. Just about every major (and several minor) infrastructure project I can remember in my lifetime, in any of the European cities I've live in, has been both late and wildly over budget

Because it's true. Projects in Europe, especially big ones, often go over budget and are late. There are extremes like Berlin Brandenburg, but usually the price increase is in the order of 20-40%, which isn't too bad considering the complexity, and there's still good results in exchange. (E.g. Grand Paris Express will cost 50% more than originally planned (35 vs 22 billion euros), take a few years more, but it will result in 200km of all new fully automated, mostly underground, metro lines which will be amazing)

In comparison, in the US and Canada big projects are absurd. Take the Second Avenue Subway in New York - it's projected to cost $6 billion for 2.4km of track (no, that's not a typo, 2.4 km of track, really).

The California HSR is costing multiple times what similar projects in other countries cost (estimated to cost upwards of $100 billion, up from the original estimate of $40 billion for the first phase of 840 km; the Turin - Lyon high speed railway in more challenging terrain, including the longest rail tunnel in the world, is projected to cost around 25 billion euros for 270km, 1/4 of the price for 1/3 of the distance).

In fact there are lots of people and publications trying to understand why costs in US and Canada are so absurd compared to anywhere else in the world:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7b5mn/a-dollar100-billion-l...

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs...

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184420745/why-building-publi...

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/28/why-does-transit-infr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzcy7Usw8y8

Case in point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport

This train tunnel below Malmö in Sweden was finished in 2010 six months earlier than planned and at a cost 10% below budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_(Malm%C3%B6)

That’s Scandinavia though.

Maybe I shouldn't paint all of Europe with the same brush. Although other comments are agreeing with my observation. And I agree that there's plenty to complain about in Europe too, but then still the total costs are often factors lower than in the US. It being outside of my professional field, I've found it quite hard to search the Internet for easily comparable numbers, but what I've been able to find over the years on cost per mile of road, or cost per meter of bridge, I've found sometimes a 10× difference between the US and the Netherlands (where I'm originally from). Maybe I'm confirming my biases, but I just don't think so.

Major infrastructure projects everywhere tend to be both late and wildly over budget, but the point is that in USA the initially budgeted cost (which is optimistic and doesn't get met) is outlandishly expensive even when compared to the actual wildly over budget cost of other places; what other countries say "wildly over budget" is still cheaper than a USA project that would get done on time below budget.

Similarly, just look at HS2 project in the UK, couldn't even get half way through the project before scrapping it.

i wonder that too (although we all know how intellectually comfortable it is to resort to tribalist thinking). human greed, inefficiency, and error is certainly not geographically restrained.

Not only that. you have to dismantle the old one and you will pay premium trying to get the new one done as quickly as possible.

> estimates of large public works projects are always too low, and actual costs can be 5-10 times higher.

The most recent example I can think of is England's High Speed 2 going from £35b to (est) £170b: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Funding

A fair bit of the cost increase of HS2 was NIMBYs wanting it to be in tunnels after the route had been chosen, replacing a bridge should be easier to estimate.

Do you think that NIMBY factor won't apply when replacing this bridge? And are you really certain that "replacing a bridge" can't or won't turn into building some tunnels during the process, as some people are already suggesting? IMHO everything is possible.

Almost definitely billions and almost definitely multiple years. Planning, testing and clean-up alone could be over a year. It's far too early to even put a number on it.

Even if we assume $600m is the correct number, the expenditure is evenly distributed, and it takes 6 years to be fully up and running. Based on 3% inflation alone:

Year 1: $100m, Year 2: $103m, Year 3: $109m, Year 4: $112m, Year 5: $116m, Year 6: $119m = $666m

That seems an amazing value. Here in NYC, it costs $50-100M to build a subway elevator.

at quite literally impossible and only a fictionalized accounting to boot. too many cut checks, too many depository accounts, and never enough paper trail to know for sure.

so yeah, maybe—maybe less, maybe more, maybe no one has even the slightest clue, not even within a wildly outrageous range, of the true monetary total cost of anything at public infrastructure scale.

Given that there is sufficient capacity to route vehicle traffic to different paths, there is time to measure and plan: I would think people would look to a tunnel instead of a bridge in any rebuild of that route.

There is a tunnel further south in the Chesapeake Bay where there are navy/military facilities that cannot risk being blocked by falling bridges.

As I understand it, hazardous material loads cannot be transported through tunnels. So having a bridge that allows that (and prevents the need for hazmat loads being routed through the city center) does make some sense. I suspect the cost of a bridge replacement might also be cheaper than both a tunnel and redoing all the roadways and infrastructure leading up to it, but don't know for certain. If anyone has a more informed estimate, please share.

I hope not. I was irresponsible to let ships pass a dozen times a day through a flimsy contraption that could collapse at the first nudge. This risk was unacceptable.

Unacceptable!

The people of Baltimore have benefited for years of a port facility literally downtown, which is practically the same thing as building houses in a flood zone. Should have never been permitted!

I hope “We The People” accepts the responsibility for their actions!

the use of "flimsy contraption" and "first nudge" indicates your level of ignorance of the subject.

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/kinetic-energy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Dali#Description

"Description

Dali is a Neopanamax container ship[7] with an overall length of 299.92 metres (984 ft), beam of 48.2 metres (158 ft 2 in), moulded depth of 24.8 metres (81 ft 4 in), and summer draft of 15.03 metres (49 ft 4 in). Her gross and net tonnages are 91,128 and 52,150, respectively, and her deadweight tonnage is 116,851 tonnes. Her container capacity is 9,971 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU).[2][8]

Dali is propelled by a single low-speed two-stroke crosshead diesel engine coupled to a fixed-pitch propeller. Her main engine, a 9-cylinder MAN-B&W 9S90ME-C9.2[9] unit manufactured by Hyundai Heavy Industries under license, is rated 41,480 kW (55,630 hp) at 82.5 rpm.[2] Her service speed is 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph).[5] For maneuvering in ports, Dali has a single 3,000 kW (4,000 hp) bow thruster. Electricity is generated onboard by two 3,840 kW (5,150 hp) and two 4,400 kW (5,900 hp) auxiliary diesel generators.[4] "

As is often the case, the truth is far more complicated.

Firstly, the bridge - while up to code - did not have the kinds of buffers that could have been installed, or arguably should have been installed [1]

It isn't wrong to say that if you are going to authorise large container ships, if you are going to profit from large container ships as a harbour, and you are not going to invest properly in the infrastructure, you should take some of the blame when things inevitably go wrong. I don't know whether such buffers would have entirely saved the bridge or the people on it.

It also isn't wrong to say that if you are operating a large container ship, you should ensure it has failsafes in case of power failure. I don't know what failsafes exist (emergency anchors? Some kind of manual rudder?) that would be effective on a ship that large.

It also isn't wrong to say that given the public outcry, a scapegoat will likely be chosen, and it's more likely that they will scapegoat the foreigners rather than blame the politicians in charge of public spending.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/baltimore-br...

> It also isn't wrong to say that if you are operating a large container ship, you should ensure it has failsafes in case of power failure. I don't know what failsafes exist (emergency anchors? Some kind of manual rudder?) that would be effective on a ship that large.

All large vessels require emergency generators. The requirement is usually startup within 45s but better performance is generally expected.

Here is an in-depth look on how steering systems on such vessels work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JElUSyNIJGo

This does raise the question of whether the new bridge will need to be larger and stronger. Will it need to be designed to withstand the hit from these new larger vessels?

>A notable example of dolphins used to protect a bridge is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the mouth of Tampa Bay. In 1980, the MV Summit Venture hit a pier on one of the bridge's two, two-lane spans causing a 1,200-foot (370 m) section of the bridge to fall into the water, resulting in 35 deaths. When a replacement span was designed, a top priority was to prevent ships from colliding with the new bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)#To_protect...

Ideally they'll put dolphins protecting the piers, but they may be constrained with channel width and location. The key would be to keep the piers from being hit, not to withstand a hit.

Flimsy:

- You are arguing how big the container ship is,

- It only emphasizes how weak the bridge is compared to the ship and obviously to all ships going through this harbor.

Obviously the bridge is not flimsy compared to mere thousands of cars, but when it’s a bumper on the side of the regular path of herds of 200 elephants of about 1000x the normal size ten times a day, then yes, it’s flimsy.

If you see a sign “Forbidden to elephants” tomorrow on your city’s preferred pedestrian bridge, it’s me. Now I wonder why your politicians didn’t put it for the bridge. It’s simple: The port should pay for dolphins and all security measures, or only sailboats will be allowed.

So yes, you arguing the size of the ship only emphasizes the flimsiness of the contraption.

I agree that:

> "flimsy contraption" and "first nudge"

Is crap just wanted to note that bridge protection do exist, Ex: https://www.drba.net/drba-proceeds-new-bridge-ship-collision...

So it could be argued that part of the responsibility is on the port authority that did not correctly ensure the safeguard of the bridge.

Pretty sure they're being sarcastic.

Can you explain?

It obviously reads as satire.

Could I bother you explain? I'm slow and I don't see it. Just reads as a bad take.

The level of "outrage" deliberately exceeds the reasonableness of their position, which strongly suggests they're being sarcastic.

- They use "unacceptable" twice in a row, which sounds exaggerated.

- Likewise with all the exclamation points.

- They say "It was irresponsible to let ships pass a dozen times a day through a flimsy contraption that could collapse at the first nudge.", but ships pass under bridges all the time. IIRC, in Baltimore's case, I'm not even sure you can exit the inner harbor without going under that bridge.

- "The people of Baltimore have benefited for years of a port facility literally downtown, which is practically the same thing as building houses in a flood zone. Should have never been permitted!" Ports are literally designed to be on water, and the comparison makes no sense. Combined with the exclamation points, I don't think this is serious.

- "I hope “We The People” accepts the responsibility for their actions!" This is comedic. You have the excess exclamation point, and it even implies that we're collectively to blame for this.

"We The People" didn't try and operate a vessel with containers stacked so high its ridiculous.

Where were the tugboats? Bridges are not bumper cars. You cannot hit them.

To call it flimsy when the bridge carried 34,000 cars a day is silly.

I should not pay for gross misconduct.

Why did the boat leave the pier with a faulty engine?

The reality is complicated, there are liability arguments on both sides and a deal to be struck that'll land most costs on one party over another.

* Where were the tugboats?

* Why did the boat leave the pier with a faulty engine?

The ship was still within harbour waters under the control of local harbour pilots. They didn't have tugboats within near distance and they took the engine status on good faith.

As a risk management exercise if you run a harbour with high traffic then eventually a ship will have an engine|rudder|other failure within harbour waters and bridges will be struck with glancing to major blows.

It's an older bridge built before ship sizes grew, was the harbour infrastructure lagging behind the nature of the traffic it purported to serve?

Other harbours have pylons protected with substantial barriers, other harbours ban traffic | workers on cross harbour bridges when ships move (eg: Tasmania after they had a ship hit a bridge).

The ship maintainance was very likely at fault, the harbour should have mitigation plans against ship faults, etc.

> Where were the tugboats? Bridges are not bumper cars. You cannot hit them.

Through a bridges lifetime in a busy shipping lane you can expect it to get hit. Thus any reasonable bridge is designed with, or has barriers retrofitted to them.

It just US infrastructure lagging behind as is typical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)

https://www.drba.net/drba-proceeds-new-bridge-ship-collision...

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