Building a Bridge for the Future.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

It's been two years exactly since the Francis Scott Key Bridge here in Baltimore was hit by a

container ship, the Dali, causing it to collapse. When it fell, the state lost a well-traveled highway

that served commuters as well as truckers moving goods around the port of Baltimore.

Now the state is rebuilding the bridge. I met Jim Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation

Authority, down by the construction site, where there is a hum of activity. You can see tugboats

pushing barges with metal that'll support the bridge. You've got tugs. You have at least two cranes.

And then, yeah, like, there's more on the other side. Harkness told me the new bridge will not be the same key bridge that was built in the 1970s.

It'll be higher and longer, spanning over two miles.

It'll also incorporate new technology.

With a bridge of this size, of this complexity, we are going to be including some structural health monitoring. So that is some elements

that will be on some of the pieces of the new cable state bridge that will be able to give us

data about how the bridge is performing. We also have, because we have 600 foot towers,

we'll have some mechanical equipment in there as well.

We'll have some elevators enabling access for the bridge.

It allows us for maintenance to get up into where the cables anchor into those main pylons

and access portions of the bridge for inspection as well.

Since we're close to the port, we get some larger, heavier loads that come across, or want to come across.

Big trucks are going across the bridge.

The former bridge had load restrictions, so above a certain weight, we couldn't bring it over the bridge.

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