The right question about Key bridge, can we even rebuild it . The 70’s was a different time .

Build a new Scott Key Bridge.

However, this time be sure to add protective fenders/dolphins.

The Dolphins are made out of concrete.

Other bridges have them.

The Concrete Dolphins are sacrificed in order to protect the bridge from a wayward ship.

This was all easily preventable.

Seek the truth. Put on your Engineers hat.

meanwhile in the Darien Gap China is building a bridge without official approval from Panama linking south america and central amercia - an express route to the united states for their CCP invaders.

Bridges kill people. Ban bridges.

Bridges kill people. Ban bridges.

So basically the way the time line will work is:

1.) DOT has to wait for funding or a bond for the project. Could be years.
2.) DOT will have to do it's on in house work prior to issuing it for bid. Probably a year or less unless they do an evaluation of the approach bridges and see that they may be in need of repair or replacement. So year and a half to 2 years.
3.) Once issued for bid the bidder will probably have 60 days to submit bids.
4.) DOT reviews and awards the bid.
5.) Multiple firms will be working on this. Civil, structural, Environmental, Geotechnical, MEP etc. etc. Design for a bridge of this scope just to put plans on the table to the DOT to review is an easy 2 years.
6.) DOT will have to do it's in house review of all scopes of the project. 6 months tops.
7.) All subs will have to revise things from the DOT. Couple months.

That's all before any work is done besides demo work of the existing structure/structures.

That bridge won't be complete within 10 years. If it is done faster than that it's because they will do a design build which would be a disaster on something of this scale.

That's what I believed initially. However, this was a cargo ship with a dead weight of 113000 tons. The dolphins wouldnt be capable of stopping it. The only feasible solution would be building a large artificial island for them to run aground instead, which considering the depth, would be quite costly (not to mention lessening the width of the shipping channel so not ideal)

clearly these dolphins are not stopping any ships.

As someone who hires engineers in Maryland for the gov I can tell you there are plenty of engineers to hire and plenty of engineer companies that will be jumping at this opportunity. Now most of the engineers are in other countries but we still have competent ppl to build it.

hire china

meanwhile in the Darien Gap China is building a bridge without official approval from Panama linking south america and central amercia - an express route to the united states for their CCP invaders.