Canal upgrades improve efficiency

Canal upgrades improve efficiency       The construction of a third set of locks, as well as dredging the Pacific and Atlantic approaches, is the latest in a series of ongoing upgrades for the Panama Canal.
      Management has invested more than $1.5 billion in facility improvements since 2000.
      Last June, the Panama Canal Authority completed a major project to light the lock chambers, enabling it to extend the work day and handle more ships.
      From January 2007 to August 2008, the canal authority increased its tugboat fleet to 42 with the addition of eight new tugboats, and last year ordered an additional 13 tugboats (with options for seven more), the first of which is scheduled for delivery in mid-2010. It is scheduled this year to solicit proposals for two special tugboats to tender dredge vessels involved in the expansion program, as well as a replacement cutter suction dredge for maintaining channel depths.
      Workers completed in December a second tie up station north of the Pedro Miguel Locks, which allows two additional transits per day and is especially helpful during fog season. The additional throughput is also a function of a new rail track at the Gatun locks that allow more efficient use of locomotives used to help maintain vessels in position within the lock chambers. The towing track cannot be used to assist transiting ships when the locomotive is repositioned for its next job. Last October, the canal authority installed a return track that allows the engine to follow a loop to the start point without going back and forth along the towing track.
      A third set of locks may only be an interim step on the way to even more capacity. Rudolfo Sabonge, vice president of market research and analysis for the Panama Canal Authority, did not rule out the possibility of building a fourth set of locks at some point.
      The authority is not actively considering such a step, but long-term conceptual plans include an option for another set of locks, he said at a mid-January workshop in Tampa hosted by the American Association of Port Authorities.