Can Gordie Howe save Maryland from its Chesapeake Bay Bridge blues?
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is named for a governor no one remembers, except that his name was Lane and there aren't enough of them on his bridge.
When the $6.4 billion crossing that links Detroit and Windsor, Canada opens next September, it will honor a man who wore a bridge after his front teeth got knocked out in his first pro hockey game — and who popped it out for his final game at age 52.
Getting the Gordie Howe International Bridge almost to completion took 25 years, from the first studies to an international agreement, from a global pandemic to the planned opening ceremonies.
Construction started in 2018, one year after Maryland started planning a new Bay Bridge . Sometimes, to a layman like me, it seems like a never-ending journey.
On Tuesday, the Maryland Transportation Authority announced it is building two bridges — two! — to replace the aging spans that connect the Annapolis area and the Eastern Shore.
"So you build half of the facility, you immediately get some relief from that," said Bruce Gartner, the authority's executive director. "Then you can take the bridge down while you're working within the same right of way. And then you get to consider where the next bridge goes and then have relief after that point."
If I were to bet, the Gordie Howe will prove the easier project. It's less than half the scale of the Bay Bridge. It crosses an international border, yes, but it's a major economic initiative that earned widespread support early on.
Yet, there are lessons to be gained from what the Canadians are building.
"Hello, ," Manny Paiva answered the phone on Wednesday.
Paiva is a spokesman for the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. It was created to build the 1.5-mile bridge connecting the United States and Canada over the Detroit River. When I told him I was trying to draw a comparison between his project and one 549 miles to the southeast, he was confused.
No two bridges are an exact comparison. In terms of scale, the Gordie Howe is the largest project in North America right now. It's a closer match to rebuilding the Key Bridge, which an errant cargo ship knocked over in March.
When the Michigan-to-Ontario bridge opens it will be the longest cable-stayed bridge on the continent. It's just six lanes, compared to as many as 10 proposed for a new Chesapeake crossing. It's only 186 feet above the water, while a new bay bridge will rise 230 feet to meet new shipping channel needs.
When I explained Maryland is recommending two bridges, Paiva was even more confused.
"What?" he said.
It makes me see double, too. Gartner explained the logic this way.
The William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, named for the governor who got this job done, opened with a two-lane span in 1952. A second, three-lane bridge followed in the mid-1970s. The older bridge — absent even breakdown lanes — needs replacing first.
"This approach allows us to focus on that one," Gartner said.
That doesn't mean one giant bridge is out of the question. Maddeningly, somehow "no bridge" is still an option. Given miles-long congestion and questions about safety, it's one almost nobody wants anymore.
If it seems like a final plan is taking forever, consider the audience. MDTA has to share its recommendation with 20 federal, state and local agencies. Even the National Park Service is involved. Then the public. Then it has to listen to the response.
"It's a lot of back and forth and talking through and sharing these materials with them and making sure they're in basic agreement with what we've put out to the public," Gartner said. "But it's a process."
Ask how much the Gordie Howe cost. The answer is $6.4 billion. But those are Canadian dollars. In U.S. currency, that's $4.6 billion. But there are no U.S. dollars involved — this is all maple leaf.
The $7.3 billion-$8.4 billion Bay Bridge could be all-Maryland. There's enough toll revenues, Gartner said. Or it might seek federal highway grants, depending on how much infrastructure money is available years from now.
The Canadian project started with years of traffic studies in a region experiencing intense economic upheaval, and still more time on environmental studies, permitting and approvals.
When construction began in 2018, it wasn't just the Gordie Howe, but also five pedestrian bridges, new border checkpoints and a revamped interstate. This is an economic engine, an international port for trucks and cars.
It includes upgrades to local roads and bridges, neighborhoods and a public art component. There are no plans for rail access — rail-to-truck depots are on both sides — but the project includes a path for pedestrians and bikes.
Maryland's plan is simultaneously bigger, yet less grand. It is a transportation project, not an economic one. Change likely to occur will flow from the bigger corridor — more lanes means more traffic.
Many of the design alternatives would widen Route 50 between the Ritchie Highway/Route 450 interchange near Annapolis and the Route 301 split in Queen Anne's County.
At least all the plans for new bridges include bike and pedestrian paths.
"You'll see that still in all alternatives that we'd be potentially moving forward with," Gartner said.
The MDTA wants to finalize a plan a year from now and finish the job by the end of the next decade.
There is always the unexpected. The Canadians dealt with COVID, the supply chain mess and two sets of construction ecosystems.
"Designing and delivering a bridge across two nations poses inherent challenges: from working with different engineering codes, unions, regulations and even units of measure, to complying with stringent customs and border crossing requirements," Paiva said.
Maryland had the Key Bridge. Its collapse set back the Bay Bridge process but not the end date.
"You're building these for 100 years, so it's more a matter of which one of the bridges was first," Gartner said.
MDTA officials head to public meetings for responses from Marylanders starting next month.
The first is online, from 6-8 p.m., Dec. 4 at baycrossingstudy.com . The MDTA will lay out its plans at Broadneck High School near Annapolis from 6-8 p.m., Dec. 9, and at Kent Island High School on the other side of the bay from 6-8 p.m., Dec. 11.
The sessions can be intimidating scenes of chaos, with maps sprawled across tables and hundreds of people talking at once. The MDTA has a recommendation for that, too.
"Everything's out there on the website," Gartner said. "That's the reason it's out there, so people can come prepared."
