I was fortunate enough to have visited the original Panama Canal while watching the new canal being built. Then, a few years later, I got to see the ships going through the new Panama Canal and the original at the same time. This was an amazing experience.
The Panama Canal is a 48 mile-long international waterway that allows ships to pass between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, saving about 8000 miles from a journey around the southern tip of South America. The Panama Canal was built between 1904 to 1914 and was once a territory of the United States but today it is part of Panama. It takes approximately fifteen hours to traverse the canal through its sets of locks. Half the time is spent waiting due to traffic and there are many ships waiting to pass through the Canal.
I got to explore the Panama Canal in 2014, on the centennial anniversary.
The Panama Canal expansion project, also called the Third Set of Locks Project, doubled the capacity of the Panama Canal by adding a new lane of traffic allowing for a larger number of ships, and increasing the width and depth of the lanes and locks allowing larger ships to pass. The new larger size of ships, called New Panamax, are about one and a half times the previous Panamax size and can carry over twice as much cargo. The expanded canal began commercial operation on 26 June 2016 and was hailed as an historic moment for global trade.
The American Society of Civil Engineers selected the Panama Canal as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, engineering marvels that exemplified the abilities of humans to construct amazing features on Earth. While visiting the Expanded Panama Canal or Third Set o Locks, there were talks of about creating a Fourth Set of Locks in a new canal because containership sizes are built even bigger since the expanded canal was built. Further expansion could be needed.
