Bigger, taller Bay Bridge replacement gets federal green light

It’s official: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Central Maryland’s gateway to the Eastern Shore, is getting replaced by something bigger and taller.

Federal highway officials have signed off on the environmental review process for replacing the aging, roughly 4-mile structures linking Anne Arundel and Queen Anne’s counties, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owns and operates the bridge and other tolled facilities across the state.

The MDTA now has the official green light for two four-lane spans, each with full shoulders, to replace the existing ones, which will be demolished. The new spans will also have a vertical clearance above the water of about 230 feet — taller than the existing bridge — to allow for larger ships to enter the Port of Baltimore.

Officials estimate the structures will carry a price tag between $14.8 and $17.6 billion, meaning it will be one of the most ambitious — and most expensive — infrastructure projects Maryland has ever undertaken. The complete funding and financing strategy remains unclear, though replacing the spans will likely require significant support from the Federal Highway Administration.

Melissa Williams, the MDTA’s planning director, said in an interview that the organization will begin assembling a design team shortly and she anticipates launching the final design in the spring of 2028. Construction could begin in the summer of 2032 “if the stars align,” she said.

Determining how the construction will proceed is still a long way off. But officials have previously said they’d like to build the new spans incrementally so that construction does not impact traffic flow. One example would be to construct a new eastbound span and get it travel-ready before demolishing the existing one. Then they could proceed using the same sequence for the westbound span.

The option to build a shared-use pedestrian path on one of the new spans also successfully moved through the federal environmental process. The MDTA has not made a final call as to whether to move forward with it, however, and will make that decision during the final design process, Williams said.

The shared-use path will likely add roughly $1.2 billion to the overall project cost, Williams said. The high-end estimate of $17.6 billion includes the shared-use path option.

Though the dollar amount is an eye-popping figure, it’s the least expensive of six options reviewed during the environmental process, which also included a proposal for two five-lane spans.

The selected option will includes full-sized shoulders that will help reduce delays during emergencies or maintenance, Williams said. It will also reduce the need for “contraflow” operations, which is when the larger of the two current bridges handles traffic going in both directions simultaneously.

The timeline for the future Bay Bridge means the MDTA will be designing one megaproject while building another. The ongoing replacement of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, also owned and managed by the transportation authority, is estimated to conclude by the end of 2030.

Shortly after the Key Bridge was knocked down by a wayward container ship in 2024, state officials explored fortifying the older and more heavily trafficked Bay Bridge with a new pier protection system.

Originally, the MDTA hoped to begin procurement by 2025 and finish constructing physical protections during the 2027-28 winter, but it has fallen behind schedule.

In an email Thursday, MDTA spokesperson Brad Tanner wrote that a design-build contract for the protection system would be awarded by the middle of next year.

Williams said that the protections — which could include fenders around piers or artificial islands, known as “dolphins” — are estimated to cost about $160 million. They will be designed to protect both the existing bridges and their future replacements, she said.

Plans for Bay Bridge protections came under more scrutiny in March 2025, when the National Transportation Safety Board publicly attacked the state for failing to assess risks to its bridges. Doing so had been recommended by the federal agency in years prior, but had never been mandated.

Both the NTSB and a study by Johns Hopkins engineers found that the Bay Bridge was at significantly more risk of ship strikes than bridges built today. The Hopkins analysis found that the bridge could expect to be hit once every 86 years.

Last year, Maryland paid an engineering firm $600,000 to conduct a risk analysis that has been shielded from public view. It was essentially complex math equations that calculated the likelihood of a vessel colliding with the span, but state officials have denied The Banner’s public records request to obtain it.

The southern two-lane span of the Bay Bridge first opened to motorists in 1952. The parallel three-lane span then opened in 1973. Combined, they carry roughly 27 million vehicles per year, according to state figures.

The spans are often congested, particularly over the summer, and the state first began to explore the possibility of another Chesapeake Bay crossing a decade ago.

The MDTA has faced some scrutiny for its plans to build bigger bridges, particularly from Eastern Shore communities that worry about increased traffic and impacts to surrounding land.

Williams said that the project team now includes a conservation working group charged with identifying nearby rural land that the authority will help to preserve.

This story has been updated.