Of course. What is the point of building infrastructure if politicians and their corporate buddies can't pocket a few billion in public tax money? Can you even imagine such madness as building a bridge at cost and on schedule? Can you even imagine your country not being ten years late and three times over budget when they build, say, an airport for their capital? I can't.
Simply say the magic words in the right order "please president Xi, help us rebuild our bridge"
and later of course "Biden don't, but Xi do" and presto after the immigration permits are issued you'll have a new even better bridge in 6 months, they'll even throw in a rail crossing for only a little more and no extra time. And be sure to ask about excellent deals on Chinese state rail company rolling stock while you're at it.
Exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, 3 months, if even that. If that's an important bridge I feel like they'd get that shit done before you notice it's gone.
Wouldn't be surprised if all the worst stuff that people drumming on about the Saudi's world cup stuff start happening down there. They also have semi legal immigrants working for the lowest bidders with no quasm about sacrificing humans for profits.
If something like this happens in New Orleans and damage closes the port for a considerable amount of time, the economic damage would be a black swan event.
(͡•_ ͡• )
With the Yemeni enforced blockade I was thinking about this too but with the Panama Canal and how it closing could be a massive boost for the Global South by making resource transportation very expensive and such things, but looking at it now it apparently is, or was recently, already being affected by draught losing one third of normal traffic. So I guess anything else impeding or slowing global trade in the next few months could have massive consequences when taken toghether with the other events.
Explain something to me, please, because I am unfamiliar with the locale. The bridge appears to have used a solid concrete strut and steel structure. The ship struck it at (reportedly) 15 kmh. And that was enough to collapse the whole thing. But how? There was a case in USSR of a ship hitting a bridge, and while the circumstances of the crash were different, the bridge itself is much smaller, yet stands to this day.
That Soviet ship is 4000 tons, while this one have 115000 tons. Also from what i understand the Soviet ship hit the bridge with fairly light superstructure which got cut off. While this one here just rammed one of the central bridge support with energy enough for it to just crumble and half of the brigde fallen straight down because it lost support and the other half following soon after because losing the balance. It's clearly visible on this video, entire thing just crumpled like house of cards after the hit.
For comparison, photo of that accident in Ulyanovsk, you can clearly see the difference.
EDIT: i looked the Kuybyshev class of those ships and got a fun fact, out of 9 built, 7 are still in service and all under the old Soviet names.
A pretty substantial amount of the bridge is still standing, it was the center bit that went down
Also, that ship in the USSR that hit the bridge just hit the span, not the pier. "The span cut the deck house and the cinema hall". The pier is in many ways more fragile, and also more important.
But to answer your question, the Francis Scott Key bridge was structurally deficient. It also didn't have many anti-ship defenses (like dolphins), unlike other bridges. To add on to that, the MV Dali (and most modern container ships) is really heavy, and therefore had a lot of energy, almost all of which got transferred into the bridge. Not many bridges can survive a head-on with a container ship.
Burguer Americans say some shit like "anyone can build a bridge that stands, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands". Cheaper is better right?
Honestly when I was in engineering school we where taught that we where suposed to build things that where JUST about to break (With the 10% safety margin inclided for code complance when applicable) and anything else would be wasteful over engineering
Keep in mind that the propaganda win here isn't that the bridge didn't survive being hit by a ship. It's that the work safety conditions, and this is on record the company that ran the port or the ship, I can't remember, the work conditions were so poor and the safety so poor and people so overworked that something like this was allowed to happen. And you tie that back in with the trained derailment and the continued overworking of the proletariat.
The Soviet ship was about 4000 tons displacement, the Mv Dali was 150,000 tons displacement. Ships have gotten massive over the last few decades so it's possible that the Baltimore bridge could have remained standing after being hit by an older, smaller, ship like the Soviet one.
FAFO absolutely applies here. Outsource shit to other countries and destroying your own homegrown industry sector turns out to be a horrible idea after all.