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Article: The Panama Canal's ultimate upgrade: to handle booming maritime traffic and supersize ships, the engineering marvel called the big ditch is about to get a lot bigger.(Cover story)
- Article from:
- Popular Mechanics
- Article date:
- February 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In late August, traffic jams at the Atlantic and Pacific entrances to the Panama Canal impeded a healthy chunk of the world's maritime commerce. Each day, on average, more than 40 massive ships, many of them three times as long as a football field and piled high with cargo, rode at anchor in impromptu fleets that stretched across the horizon. On the Atlantic side, most of the ships carried grain from the American heartland, bound for markets in Asia; the vessels on the Pacific side from the Far East were jammed with cars and electronics destined for the U.S. East Coast. Some ships with daily operational costs of $40,000 waited as long as a week for passage.
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