A Wider Panama Canal Opens to Giant Ships

On 26 June 2016, commercial operations commenced on the widened Panama Canal, marking the completion of the Third Set of Locks Project. The inaugural crossing was made by the Chinese-owned container vessel Cosco Shipping Panama, a New Panamax ship far larger than the vessels previously permitted through the historic waterway. Formalized after decades of studies, the project had gained political traction in April 2006 when Panamanian President Martín Torrijos proposed an overhaul to capture rising global trade flows. Voters endorsed the initiative later that year in a national referendum with a 76.8 percent majority, leading to the start of construction in 2007.

The primary motivation behind the expansion was the physical limitation of the original infrastructure. Completed in 1914, the existing twin lanes accommodated Panamax vessels of about 32 meters in beam and 294 meters in length, and a growing share of the world's container ships was too large to fit. The Panama Canal Authority projected that traffic would reach maximum sustainable capacity between 2009 and 2012 without major intervention. Furthermore, increasing commercial traffic, particularly goods carried on transpacific container routes, faced competition from the American intermodal rail network and the Suez Canal route.