One Illinois Bridge Is At Risk Of Getting Hit By A Vessel, According To NTSB

We already have plenty of airborne disasters this year, we don't need maritime ones too.

It's been about a year since the Francis Scott Key bridge was hit (and destroyed) by a cargo ship. Since then, the National Transportation Safety Board has come up with a list of bridges in the U.S. that are at risk for getting hit by some kind of vessel.

These are some of the busiest bridges for large vessels. Also taken into calculation was the likelihood that a boat would veer off-course and also what the layout of the waterways looked like as to if it would collide with the bridge.

One bridge in Illinois was listed in 'critical/essential' classification (which sounds like it's gotta get fixed).

That bridge is the Chicago Skyway Calumet River Bridge, which was built in 1958.

The bridge is 7.8 miles long and it's a toll road (go figure). It goes across the Calumet River and Calumet Harbor. It actually connects an Indiana road to the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago's Southside.

The harbor is a major hub for industrial ships, according to the bridge's website, though it provides the ships with 125 ft. vertical clearance.

The bridge was built by (and owned by for a while) the City of Chicago in 1958. When the bridge was bought by Skyway Concession Company, LLC in 2005, it marked the first privatization of an already-existing toll road in the U.S.

The bridge's CEO's message on their website says that the bridge's goal is to be the "safest, fastest, most convenient, and most reliable route to and through Chicago".