{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/bridge-and-lock-tenders/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Bridge and Lock Tenders", "soc_code": "53-6011", "category": "Transportation", "us_employment": 3040, "median_annual_wage": 57700 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 35, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 8, "embodiment": 11, "liability_shield": 6, "trust_premium": 3, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Sequencing gates, barriers, and signals to a published opening schedule and logging vessel names and times in a bridge log are already PLC-and-camera work on remotely operated spans in Florida, Michigan, and Illinois; the 8 rather than a 3 comes from the tasks that still need a body at the pier — chipping ice off a bascule leaf, clearing driftwood from a lock gate recess, hand-cranking to seat a bridge when the drive motor trips, and reading a tug captain's intent by eye when the radio is garbled.", "embodiment": "You work in an operator's house with screens, radio, and control console for most of a shift, which caps this well below a lineman's score, but the 11 reflects the rest: walking the span to verify traffic gates dropped, greasing trunnion bearings and rack teeth, hauling debris out of miter gates, and doing it in the weather on a structure over moving water where wind, ice, and current don't wait for you.", "liability_shield": "There is no operator licence for this — most tenders are trained on the structure and qualified by the owning agency or DOT, and while 33 CFR Part 117 sets bridge opening duties and the Coast Guard can cite violations, the citation lands on the bridge owner, not on your personal credential, which is why this sits at 6 and not in licensed-professional territory.", "trust_premium": "Regular tug and barge crews on a river reach come to know your voice and how you handle a tight opening, and that familiarity is worth something on a bad-visibility night, but nobody chooses a route because of which tender is on shift — the service is the span opening on time, and a remote operator in a control center delivers the same product to the same captain.", "judgment_accountability": "Most of the shift runs on written procedure — scheduled openings, signal sequences, radio protocols under Part 117 — but the 7 covers the calls that are genuinely yours: refusing or delaying an opening when a vehicle is stalled on the leaf, deciding whether an approaching barge has enough control to make the gap, and choosing to hold the bridge closed for an ambulance run against a waiting vessel." }, "rationale": "The core loop — monitor radio and sensors, log vessel passages, sequence gates and signals, open and close on a schedule — is exactly the kind of supervisory control that sensors, PLCs, and centralized remote operations centers already handle; the Panama Canal and multiple US state DOTs run bridges remotely today. What keeps the job alive is physical presence at the structure: clearing debris, greasing and hand-cranking balky machinery, spotting a barge that's drifting wrong, and being the person on site when the electronics fail. Coast Guard drawbridge regulations still mandate attended operation on many spans, but those rules are being waived for remote control one bridge at a time, so this shield is eroding by policy, not by technology.", "outlook": "Expect continued slow shrinkage as agencies win remote-operation waivers and consolidate multiple bridges under one control center, with surviving jobs shifting toward mechanical maintenance and multi-span supervision.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "A Coast Guard rulemaking under 33 CFR 117 that sets conditions on remote-operation authorizations — e.g. requiring a named, on-site qualified attendant during defined vessel seasons, or during any camera/comms degradation — rather than granting span-by-span waivers. A single serious allision or entrapment at a remotely operated draw span (of the kind that already drives NTSB marine recommendations) is the realistic trigger for CG to tighten rather than loosen these authorizations.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State DOT or bridge-authority collective bargaining language (AFSCME/Teamsters units cover tenders at NY, NJ, MA, FL, WA agencies) that ties remote-control conversion to minimum on-structure staffing or bars elimination of the attendant classification for the contract term. This is already the standard defensive clause pattern in transit and toll-collection agreements.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formalizing the tender as the designated on-scene decision-maker in the structure's emergency action plan — authority to refuse or force an opening for a distressed vessel, to hold traffic during flood or hurricane evacuation sequencing, and to declare the span out of service. Where agencies write named-role authority into EAPs (as several state DOTs did after post-Key Bridge vulnerability reviews), the call stops being schedule execution and becomes an owned judgment.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Job-description merger with bridge mechanic/electrician duties as the monitoring tier is centralized — hands-on greasing, span-lock and miter-rail adjustment, debris and ice clearing, generator and backup-drive testing become the whole job rather than filler between openings. This raises embodiment only where the agency reclassifies and pays the maintenance rate; if it instead assigns those duties to a roving crew covering ten spans, the effect is fewer positions, not a higher score.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier split exists: scheduled openings and vessel logging automate cleanly, while fault diagnosis on 80-year-old bascule and swing machinery, hand-cranking a jammed span, and reading an unpowered barge's actual drift do not. If the surviving roles are the ones stationed at the oldest non-standardized movable spans, the residual task mix is the judgment and troubleshooting tier.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "No route to trust premium — vessel operators and motorists have no ability to select or pay for a human tender, and the buyer is a single public agency under budget pressure. Also note the total is capped by scale: roughly 3,000 positions concentrated in a handful of agencies means one procurement decision per agency can eliminate a large share of the occupation regardless of how the dimensions score." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 35, 36 ], "run_verdicts": [ "EXPOSED", "EXPOSED" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 3240, "wage": 50240 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 3170, "wage": 50320 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 3150, "wage": 50110 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 3080, "wage": 52340 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 4040, "wage": 45390 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 3690, "wage": 47280 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 3460, "wage": 49120 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 2720, "wage": 58490 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 3040, "wage": 57700 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -6.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "railroad-brake-signal-and-switch-operators-and-locomotive-firers", "title": "Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 47, "median_wage": 68840, "overlap": 79, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Material Resources", "Management of Financial Resources" ] }, { "slug": "crane-and-tower-operators", "title": "Crane and Tower Operators", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 68080, "overlap": 67, "skills_to_close": [ "Repairing", "Equipment Maintenance", "Operation and Control", "Operations Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "heavy-and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers", "title": "Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "median_wage": 58640, "overlap": 67, "skills_to_close": [ "Repairing", "Equipment Maintenance", "Management of Material Resources", "Installation" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }