HAWKINS POINT, Md. — Crews have been hard at work near the remains of the Key Bridge, doing 'critical' due diligence before a new bridge is built.
The pre-construction work involves, in essence, gathering data, MDTA chief engineer Jim Harkness explained to news media Friday. Marine boring and other activities have taken place since January, and and will continue on for a few more months.
“As you can imagine," Harkness said, "the information that is related to the soils is of the utmost importance when you’re building a bridge, especially a bridge of this magnitude."
"We need to know the subsurface conditions so we can adequately design the foundations that support the new bridge," he added.
"Barges gather soil samples from the riverbed, and the information from the soil sample is used in a laboratory to help engineers in the design of the bridge foundation," Harkness said.
“They’re going to take and gather information at each of the locations where we think our new piers will be, so we need the information for each of those pier locations. Because it does vary even a couple hundred feet apart," Harkness added.
The state unveiled designs for the new bridge earlier this week.
READ MORE: New Key Bridge design unveiled by Governor Moore
The cable-stayed design would put the new bridge 45 feet taller than the old one.
The remains of the Key Bridge, however, must come down first. What WMAR-2 News saw on Friday is an important, but unrelated step to the demolition.
“What they’re doing today doesn’t relate to the demolition of the bridge- that’s a whole different one," Bill Randow, deputy director of construction, responded to a question from WMAR-2 News.
"Taking down the bridge that’s the easy part, putting up the new one’s that’s the harder part, that’s why we’ve got to collect this data for the foundations.”
The bridge remains are on track to come down in the spring, with the full bridge construction expected by 2028.
An In Focus look at the progress that was made to get to this point of constructing the new Key Bridge
