Panama Adding a Wider Shortcut for Shipping

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

COCOLÍ, Panama — For now, the future of global shipping is little more than a hole in the ground here, just a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.

Ah, but what a hole it is.

About a mile long, several hundred feet wide and more than 100 feet deep, the excavation is an initial step in the building of a larger set of locks for the Panama Canal that should double the amount of goods that can pass through it each year.

The $5.25 billion project, scheduled for completion in 2014, is the first expansion in the history of the century-old shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. By allowing much bigger container ships and other cargo vessels to easily reach the Eastern United States, it will alter patterns of trade and put pressure on East and Gulf Coast ports like Savannah, Ga., and New Orleans to deepen harbors and expand cargo-handling facilities.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/science/17canal.html?pagewanted=all

[ManiacJoe]

1. Good to hear they finally started digging.

Chalk it up to bad memory, but I swear I read somewhere a year or more ago that they had started digging back then.
:shrug:

[rabs]

4. Not bad memory at all

Work began on one section in 2008. The Atlantic dredging began in 2009, so work has been going on for up to three years.

The project made news in July of last year (2010) when a couple of strikes by Panama union workers halted work for a while. The disputes were eventually resolved.

The NYT reporters neglects to mention that South American nations (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay,) are cooperating on "dry canals" (combination of highways, railroads and river transport) that will take exports to surging Asian markets from deepwater Pacific ports in Chile and Peru. Colombia is also looking at a "dry canal" to transports goods from its Atlantic coast to its Pacific ports.

[rsmith6621]

2. My Great Great Uncle Was John Stevens Cheif Engineer

...of the Panama Canal.

[BlueJazz]

3. Whoa..That's pretty cool !

:)