Former Jacksonville mayor Alvin Brown is part of federal investigation team in Baltimore

Former Jacksonville mayor Alvin Brown, who was a big booster of the city's port during his time at City Hall, is part of the National Transportation Safety Board team that's in Baltimore investigating the deadly collision of a cargo container ship with a bridge at its port.

Brown was on the ground in Baltimore just two weeks after he took the oath of office for starting his term on the five-member National Transportation Safety Board.

"This is his training launch," NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said when she introduced him during a news conference Wednesday in Baltimore.

The board is an independent federal agency that investigates aviation accidents and other major accidents involving other types of transportation. The outcome of those investigations results in recommendations on how to prevent them from happening again, so the NTSB findings in Baltimore could affect other ports like Jacksonville where cargo ships pass under bridges.

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Brown will bring the perspective of being mayor of a city whose port is similar in size to Baltimore. He pushed for deepening the St. Johns River so it could handle bigger cargo container ships and helped land a $10 million federal grant for a facility for transferring containers between ship and rail.

He was mayor when the city almost faced its own catastrophe when a container ship struck a span of the Matthews Bridge in 2013, forcing a month-long closure of that bridge until the state could finish repairs.

At the national level, he was chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Metro Exports and Ports Task Force.

"Port issues were very important to him, really from the first months he took office," said Chris Hand, who was chief of staff for Brown during his term from 2011 to 2015.

President Joe Biden nominated Brown to the five-member National Transportation Safety Board. He joined it after winning Senate confirmation. Brown had been a senior advisor for community infrastructure opportunities at the U.S. Department of Transportation since August 2022. Before winning becoming Jacksonville mayor in 2011, Brown worked in the White House for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Hand said that experience will be "very valuable" for Brown in the NTSB role.

"I think one really important foundational experience he has is in the federal government," Hand said. "That will serve him very well."

At the news conference Wednesday, Homendy started with a message to the families of those who were on the bridge when it collapsed. Six construction workers are presumed to have died.

"Our entire mission is to save lives, and our aim is to prevent this from reoccurring," Homendy said with Brown standing next to her. "And we are so very sorry for all that your are going through. It's unimaginable and truly we think about you throughout the investigation."

The investigation of the Baltimore collision comes as the size of cargo container ships has greatly increased in recent years, raising questions about what kinds of protective barriers should be in place near bridge piers to protect them from impact if a ship veers off course.

Mayor Donna Deegan said this week the Dames Point bridge, which is part of the Interstate 295 highway through Jacksonville, has large concrete structures called "dolphins" for protecting the bridge's piers. The bridge also has sensors that give real-time data on the distance from the river surface to the bottom of the bridge so pilots know how much clearance exists.

JaxPort operates three cargo terminals. The Blount Island terminal located east of the Dames Point bridge handles the biggest cargo container ships and does not have any bridges between it and the Atlantic Ocean. Ships pass under the Dames Point bridge for calls on the Dames Point terminal, just west of the bridge, and the Talleyrand terminal closer to downtown.

On Sept. 26, 2013, a large cargo ship being towed on the river hit a center span of the Matthew Bridge, forcing closure of the heavily-traveled bridge for a month until the state Department of Transportation could repair damage A transportation department spokesman said at the time the impact was "near catastrophic."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Former Jacksonville mayor is on NTSB team investigating in Baltimore