China built a bridge in 42 hours. China built the world’s tallest bridge in four years.
Why can’t America build more like China?
Before we get any more freaked out about the latest Key Bridge setback, here’s some perspective on building bridges fast and slow.
Maryland revealed Tuesday that it had dumped Kiewit as the lead contractor on building a new Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was toppled by a container ship over two years ago.
One of North America’s biggest builders of big things, the firm was going to design and construct the new Key fast — four-years fast.
The divorce centers around cost and time estimates. The company wanted more than the state’s $5.2 billion top budget and to finish it after a 2030 deadline.
Now, Maryland must find a new contractor. Cue the lament.
America can’t build things anymore. Gov. Wes Moore screwed this up.
China. China. China.
The reality is that America is building big things fast. This is a setback, but it doesn’t reflect something fundamentally wrong.
“I wouldn’t say that Maryland is doing it wrong,” said Michael Sakata, president and CEO of the Maryland Transportation Builders and Materials Association.
“Obviously, the contractor and the owner weren’t able to come to terms on phase 2. It was a natural progression. You’d have to say they did it right.”
The poster child for infrastructure disappointment is the California-High Speed Rail project. Voters approved the San Francisco to Los Angeles project in 2008, a $33 billion build set to open by 2020.
Today, not a mile of track has been laid, the cost has ballooned to $231 billion and the goal now is to open a smaller Central California leg by 2033.
Critics — there’s a ton of politics involved — call these delays proof that we’ve overcorrected for past abuses. There are essays published, books written and campaigns waged, all arguing that the regulatory framework we created to prevent bad things has blocked us from doing anything.
Yes, China builds fast.
Planning began on the Hongqi Grand Bridge in 2018, connecting Tibet and Sichuan across a 2,500-foot cantilevered frame span. Construction took 19 months and wrapped in May 2025.
It’s part of China’s national focus on infrastructure that allowed it to scale up use of specialized equipment and prefabricated modular concrete components. It replaced urban bridges around Beijing in a weekend.
It’s impressive. But it’s also just the latest in a long history of using red scares to push for domestic changes.
Fast bridges are being built in America.
After Pittburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed in January 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation declared an emergency.
That allowed it to bypass the yearslong process of designing a 447-foot replacement, getting community feedback, pulling permits and calling for bids. The replacement opened 11 months later.
Even when rules aren’t set aside, speed is possible.
Massachusetts used accelerated bridge construction techniques in 2011 to replace 14 bridges on Interstate 93 outside Boston. Planning took four years, but construction finished in 10 weekends and within its $98 million budget.
Maryland used design-build ideas on the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge, a four-lane, 10,000-foot beam bridge — think a classic design with long-span steel-composite concrete girders — across the Potomac River to Virginia.
It took 14 years to plan, but 27 months of construction finished under budget and ahead of schedule when it opened in 2022.
When the new Key is finished, it will stretch 11,015 feet across the Patapsco River, a major shipping channel into the Baltimore Harbor. Big bridges take more time.
It’s longer than the Gordie Howe International Bridge, an 8,202-foot, cable-stay span across the Detroit River connecting Michigan with Windsor, Ontario. Its planning started 25 years ago.
Canada began construction in 2018. It’s set to open this month, but President Donald Trump added last-minute chaos with demands about co-ownership and trade concessions.
And Maryland’s project is more expensive than Virginia’s $3.9 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion. In 2016, it started planning the 8,000-foot connection under the harbor plus 10 miles of highway widening on Interstate 64. Construction started in 2020 and is projected to finish next year.
Big projects move at their own pace. Maryland governors have tried to speed them up before.
It drove Gov. Larry Hogan nuts that he couldn’t finish the 16-mile Purple Line through Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. The light rail project was approved in 2016 and was supposed to open by the end of Hogan’s second term in 2022.
The contractor walked out over a cost dispute. Residents objected to the route. Metro, which operates D.C.’s subway and bus systems, wouldn’t commit to accepting the system.
Now completion is projected for 2027, and the cost doubled to $4 billion.
Moore set himself up for a similar disappointment with his ambitious timetable for the Key Bridge.
Elements of the review process take a long time — labor agreements, lawsuits, environmental safeguards and historic preservation.
That’s before you begin to talk about money.
“How do you pay for these major projects if there’s uncertainty in purchasing power?” Sakata asked. “This is the first year in its 100-year history where the gas tax wasn’t the major funding for the Transportation Trust Fund.”
Maybe some things could move faster. Fast, though, isn’t always best.
China’s Hongqi Bridge closed Nov. 10 after inspections found deck warping and cracks. It collapsed the next day.
And surprises, well, they’re to be expected.
By 1960, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel was at capacity. The State Roads Commission planned an outer-harbor crossing to fix the congestion. The General Assembly approved a bond bill in 1968 to pay for it.
The state opened construction bids in July 1970. The reality was brutal.
Contractors said the true cost was 55% higher than estimated. Designers started again.
They swapped out the planned tunnel, chosen to avoid a bridge-ship collision, replacing it with a less expensive, 8,636-foot-long, four-lane steel truss bridge over the Patapsco.
In the end, the tunnel would have cost less.
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