Crews this month wheeled ashore the first four of sixteen gates—each the size of a 10-story building—for the Panama Canal’s new locks, a major milestone for the $5.2-billion project. Mounted on self-propelled motorized wheel transporters, each of the 3,100-ton gates was off-loaded onto a temporary dock on the Atlantic side of the waterway, not far from the new locks that will be their permanent home.
The gates, costing about $548 million to fabricate and install, are the centerpiece of the enormous third set of locks that is being built as part of the so-called third-lane expansion of the canal. When finished, the new locks are projected to double the historic waterway’s capacity by allowing the passage of post-Panamax-sized shipping vessels. The new gates will roll in and out from housings within the new lock structure, unlike the canal’s existing locks, which use miter-style gates that swing outward to permit the passage of vessels from one chamber to another. The second pair will arrive in November.