4 ms·
>Doesn't this seem short sighted? there's a balance between planning for the future and unreasonable expectations or overplanning. expecting concrete to last
by notatoad 10y ago
>Doesn't this seem short sighted?
there's a balance between planning for the future and unreasonable expectations or overplanning. expecting concrete to last 100 years seems like a reasonable expectation to me. We might not be post-container-ship in 100 years, but there's a good chance there's some other reason the current locks are obsolete - anything from the locks being too small, to Gatun lake being dried up, to automated ports making it easier to unload, transport overland, and re-load onto a waiting ship.
- Gustomaximus 10y agoThis reply supports the second point of the locks being so tied to the current panamax size. Obviously there is balance of current cost to future benefit but this upgrade seems entirely tied to what is relevant today, when we know 20 years from now will be different. If you look at ship sizes they tend to jump a fair bit every ~20 years. There must be another factors like the lake depth encouraging them to restrict to this size. It just seems too short sighted (from my uneducated view), especially when as others have pointed out there are already much larger ships.