Local advocates and public officials say the bridge accident in Baltimore early Tuesday morning, caused by a cargo ship striking the bridge, highlights the importance of addressing the structural deficiencies of bridges here in Massachusetts.
Gov. Maura Healey told GBH News that such a catastrophic accident was much less likely to occur here.
“Massachusetts does not have the same kind of cargo traffic that they have through the Port of Baltimore,” Healey said on Boston Public Radio. “We used to, but in recent years that has changed. And much of it is happening with cargo coming into Massachusetts — but not having to pass under bridges.”
Phineas Baxandall, an expert on transportation and the interim president at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, or MassBudget, said “this tragedy highlights how important public infrastructure is to a region.”
“There’s going to be a long, long time where people’s lives are going to be deeply disrupted — beyond the people who are tragically most affected,” Baxandall said. “It’s going to be a lot of disruption, and, eventually, a lot of resources necessary to rebuild this bridge.”
A 2022 analysis by MassBudget found 644 structurally deficient bridges — about 1 in 12 throughout Massachusetts.
Baxandall said that, while those deficient bridges are not necessarily dangerous, “there are a few dozen bridges that have been closed because of concerns, and those closures affect the communities around them.”
It’s a much smaller version of the disruption Baltimore is now facing, Baxandall said.
“But people — whether it’s about picking up their kids after school, or about ambulances getting where they need to go quickly, they have to go around if they can’t go the right way,” Baxandall said. “It’s just an enormous disruption of life to have this piece of public infrastructure just removed.”
Some highly trafficked bridges, like the Sagamore Bridge on the Cape, could soon be replaced using hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars. But Healey underscored that those bridges are still safe.
“Sagamore Bridge has been inspected and it has been labeled structurally deficient, which is why we want the bridges replaced,” Healey said. “That said, structurally deficient doesn't mean unsafe, because what happens is, when there is that designation, there was work immediately done to ensure safe passage.
“But it doesn't take away from the fact that we actually need to have these bridges replaced,” the governor added.
Healey said she would be meeting with officials from several agencies on Tuesday afternoon to review port and bridge safety in the commonwealth, including: the U.S. Coast Guard, MassDOT, Massport and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
