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by mcv 818 days ago
You can have smaller container ships. Or have the port outside the bridge. Or indeed replace the bridge with a tunnel, or a better bridge.

Amsterdam has no bridges at all crossing the IJ on the west side (where sea-going ships come from) and only a single bridge on the east side (though there's often talk of adding another). Everything is tunnels.

Rotterdam has bridges (including the famous Erasmusbrug), but only east of the port area. To the west, everything is tunnels. And the largest ships don't even come close to the city center, but dock at the Maasvlakte out at sea.

For both cities, ports have constantly moved closer to the sea.
2 comments
ThrustVectoring 818 days ago
You don't even need to run it as a tunnel the entire way through - Chesapeake Bay has vehicular traffic routed through a combination bridge/tunnel, using tunnels to span the two major shipping channels crossed by the complex.
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mcv 818 days ago
The A10 ring in Amsterdam does the same on the east side. The west is all tunnel, the east is half tunnel half bridge.
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palmfacehn 818 days ago
Baltimore has been in a steady state of decline as long as I can recall. Industry has constantly moved away.

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/as-residents-leave-balti...

>“There’s a lot of people staying [in those cities] and we want to be sure they’re not left with an excess of infrastructure that’s impossible to maintain,” he said. “So what do we do about it?”

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robswc 818 days ago
Don't know why this is controversial.

I lived in the NOVA area for more than a decade and each visit to Baltimore (every few years) was more depressing. Of course, that's anecdotal but I'll stand by it.

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palmfacehn 818 days ago
Maybe they felt it was off-topic? Industry has been moving away since the 1950s. Today I read that container traffic has increased over the past couple of years.

It is hard not to feel a sense of tragedy if you know something about the place. It is written all over the city. The blocks and blocks of boarded up row houses speak for themselves. Now they are tearing them down. Maybe that is for the best, but it doesn't seem like a win.

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robswc 816 days ago
I get the same impressions.
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