Good news for civil engineering the announcement government Bill that promotes the enlargement of the Panama Canal. A project cost, of about 5 billion euros.
Sorry guys, its not going to happen. As global warming worsens, the Northwest passage will open up to shipping, and traffic through the canal will rapidly diminish...
-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!
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The shipping industry will continue building bigger (wider) ships. The canal will not be ignored or forgotten. Though maybe the bigger ships will take the NW Passage.
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
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The whole point of the extension is so it can take the largest ships currently around or expected to be available in the near future, as well as just increase level of traffic.
Apparantly SUEZ had an upgrade a while back and it seems like they're just trying to catch up.
No, I don't think so and my wording may have been misleading.
If I understand and recal correctly it's more the fact that the need to be able to fit through Suez limited the size of some ships, Panama could handle larger ones. There were/are size classes called 'Suez Max' and 'Pana Max', with Suez Max being smaller
Since the upgrade I believe the Suez can handle larger ships so 'Pana Max' is effectively the lower limit now.
Ships are growing larger regardles and just not going through the canal.
So to solve the current problem of more traffic than it can handle and to prevent possible future loss in traffic if ships just get too big, they are expanding the canal.
Apparantly the US had started this years ago when it was still in control but it wasn't completed, they are actually planning to make use of some the diggings the US started.
I think the building of a larger Panama Canal is a now or never situation.
The fact that global warming will make the NorthWest Passage available for free in say 30 years requires that the investment ($) in the Panana Canal must be done NOW! so the money can be recooped before the canal becomes
redundant.
If you're going from the eastern seaboard of the US to say, Shanghai in 30 years' time, is the shortest route through an enlarged Panama canal or through the Norwthwest passage?
I'd be surprised this goes too far myself. Wouldn't it be cheaper to rail the product to the Pacific coast and then ship it from there? If it is petroleum, you may even be able to pipe it to the coast first.
The Panama Canal expansion is supported by such diverse interests as China, the US & Venezuela. Rail & truck links to US Pacific ports are pretty maxed out, further port expansion space is limited (at LA/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle) and it's more efficient to move cargo by ship.
In addition to numerous economic reasons, China has political reasons for improved access to the Caribbean (greater economic leverage to win over the nations still recognizing Taiwan as Republic of China):
The most recently traversed Northwest Passage route is somewhat of a Canadian IntraCoastal Waterway. "The Canadian military refers to the sea route exclusively as the Canadian Internal Waters."
It will be considered a twisted, inconvenient route by 2025-2030 when a more northerly, deepwater Canadian route will be open, and forgotten by 2050 when the Arctic Ocean will be open perhaps year round.
NASA photos of the Artic from 1979 (top) and 2003:
You have to consider how commodities were transported then vs. now. When the Panama Canal was built nobody had heard of the modern shipping container. Things went into boxes and barrels and those boxes and barrels were stowed by hand. At the rail-ship interface (to use a term that would never have been used then) those boxes and barrels were moved by hand a lot, often with a warehouse between the rail car and the ship. Containers make it much easier and efficient to move cargo from ship to rail or rail to ship.
Sure, it's probably 'more efficient' now to load/unload cargo than then with automation, standard containers etc but then again back then you could use cheap labor (I'd guess in that part of the world very cheap) and safety would be a minor consideration so I wonder how much the equivalent cost differential really is.
Also the enlargement if I recall correctly is basically the building of new locks, and improvements to largely pre-existing channels. While a major undertaking, in real terms it's probably not as big as the original construction. Plus I seem to recall many of the techniques/much of the equipment used to build the original canal was in its infancy or had to be developed specifically for the canal at the time. Now I believe all the required technology etc exists and is fairly mature, so I'd expect the risk is somewhat lower.
Plus I wonder what the cost of the improvements that would be needed to docks, transport routes, pipelines etc to allow transport by land would be. Would it be less than the planned improvements to the docks?
Ships are already queing at the canal so could we assume that if the infrastructure already existed to send the cargo by train etc that they'd already be doing it.
Moving cargo by ship is still one of the cheapest/most efficient ways per mile so that needs to be taken into account.
As I eluded to above if I recall correctly part of the reason for the canal was to allow major units of the US Navy to get from Atlantic to pacific quickly. This probably isn't a big consideration this time but you never know what's hidden in some legal document somewhere.
Shipping direct to East Coast ports will put the containers close to market, eliminating the loading & unloading of railcars altogether. As I'm sure China has figured out!
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