Mass. officials ‘reassured’ on bridge safety after Md. collapse
Massachusetts transportation officials said at a press conference Tuesday that they feel “reassured” about the safety of bridges in the state despite the Baltimore bridge disaster, as Massachusetts has different systems and protocols surrounding marine traffic.
The press conference followed a meeting Governor Maura Healey convened earlier that afternoon with officials from the Coast Guard, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Department of Transportation, and the Boston Pilots Association.
A container ship lost power and rammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, causing the span to buckle and plunging several vehicles into the water below. The ship’s crew reportedly issued a mayday call moments before the crash.
State highway administrator Jonathan Gulliver said the state will “very closely” monitor “exactly what went wrong in Baltimore,” but that Massachusetts appeared to operate much differently.
“We are not the same sized port as they have in Baltimore. We don’t have the same sized navigable waterways nor the same sized bridges,” he said. “We have a bunch of different systems, from the sounds of it, than they do in Baltimore.”
He said Massachusetts waterways don’t see as many barges the size of the cargo ship that struck the Baltimore bridge, and even fewer travel underneath state bridges. And when ships do arrive in Massachusetts ports, he said, Pilots Association tugboats accompany ships in and out of the harbor “from start to finish.”
Still, Gulliver noted that out of 85 state bridges that carry traffic over navigable waterways, two have a similar structure to the Baltimore bridge and also cross over maritime traffic: the Tobin Bridge connecting Boston and Chelsea over the Mystic River, and the Braga Bridge connecting Somerset and Fall River over the Taunton River. All 5,000 Massachusetts bridges managed by the state Department of Transportation are inspected at least once every two years, he said.
Tuesday’s meeting among various transportation agencies was “reassuring for everybody involved that we have a very safe system,” Gulliver said. “We have some very, very strong maritime professionals to ensure the waterways are safe.”
Healey on Tuesday said she convened the meeting “to make sure that all of our protocols are where they need to be and that we are doing everything that we can to ensure the safety of our ports and our bridges.”
Healey said state officials regularly inspect the bridges, noting that the Tobin Bridge — that the state wants to study replacing — was inspected “as recently as a couple of months ago.”
Appearing on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio,” she said that coincidently, she had been scheduled to meet with Maryland Governor Wes Moore on Tuesday morning before he flew back from Massachusetts “in the middle of the night” after the bridge collapse.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Massachusetts Department of Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt said the state recognized that the Baltimore collapse has Massachusetts residents looking for information on bridge safety here.
“We are working together to ensure that we are prepared to mitigate any issues as they happen,” she said. “We will continue to work with our partners across the board.”
Gulliver also said there have been strict standards in building bridges throughout the past three to four decades.