12 ms·

So, how long until we get a NEW, new suezmax class of containerships to compensate?

egeozcan 5y ago
This would be then very similar to the Bosphorus bridge problem in Istanbul. A bridge wasn't enough, so they built the second. After it's opened, came a spike in car sales so that it wasn't enough way sooner than expected, so they built a third bridge, completion of which is followed by a spike in car sales, despite the economical situation.
- DC-3 5y ago
  This problem generalises and is why building more, bigger roads is not a silver bullet solution to congestion. More road capacity pushes people towards using cars for all their journeys so increases traffic, sometimes to the extent that congestion is worsened not lessened.
  - triska 5y ago
    This phenomenon is known as the Jevons paradox, named after British logician, economist and statistician William Stanley Jevons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - dalbasal 5y ago
      Traffic/travel is a relatively special case though... We have a near unlimited ability to consume transport. If you could get to Japan in 20m, I would probably pop over for lunch right now or Vladivostok for a Sunday stroll. As transport improves, people work/shop/etc further from home. Commuting range is measured in time, not kms. So, capacity (eg traffic) tends to be the balancing force. That's more than the typical Jevons Paradox, I think.
      - Tomte 5y ago
        For traffic you've got the even more interesting Braess's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
      - maxsilver 5y ago
        It's more the opposite special case -- we have a hard cap on our ability to consume transport, which is why it's usually a good idea to build more. You can own 2, or 20, or 200 houses, and block the usage of them from anyone else. (induced demand with unlimited consumption). You can own 2 or 20 or 200 cars, but you can't physically drive more than one at a time. This is a hard cap on transportation consumption (you can't literally drive two cars at once, you can't be going to two different places at the same time) This is why the induced demand philosophy doesn't work for cars. Demand for transit has a low hard cap. If your society is broken such that there's lots of latent unserved demand, it will artificially look like there's induced demand happening near the beginning. But that demand will vanish as soon as you get close to a functional level of capacity. For a more practical example: If you could get to Japan in 20m, then you might choose to do so, And if you could go to lunch in Japan, you can't also be having lunch in California, which means you can't be waiting in traffic on the Bay Bridge. The induced demand philosophy obsesses over the "downside" of improved transit (that you get to go to cooler places faster and cheaper), but intentionally ignores the upside (that you free up the capacity of whatever you had chosen to do prior, and now no longer do).
        amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        I doubt we could build enough capacity for all cars to be on the road at once, which seems to be where the hard cap would kick in.
        dalbasal 5y ago
        Think of travel consumption in terms of kms, not cars, trains or whatnot. Waiting in a traffic jam is not traveling. You can own 20 houses, not renting them out. People just wouldn't, because it's pointless. You could also own 97 iphones, or 400 pairs of jeans. Latent demand just that people would buy more if it was cheaper. That's normal, not broken. IDk what "artificially look like there's induced demand happening" means. If we could we would travel many more KMs. 1000s of times more, if teleporting existed and made travel instantaneous. The cost of travel, is largely time.
  - martingoodson 5y ago
    This is called ‘induced demand’. Surprisingly, the opposite happens when you remove road capacity - which is called ‘traffic evaporation’. It’s why taking road space from cars and reallocating it to bicycles is often more successful than predicted: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf
    - kqr 5y ago
      Removing capacity from infrastructure is a solution that works when you want to discourage use of that infrastructure. If that's not the case, I only know of one other solution: charge directly for usage. That way you can set the price such that demand stays at a high level, but at one supported by maximum available capacity. If someone knows of a different solution, I'd like to know -- I have an induced demand problem in a type of infrastructure that I would like to operate at high capacity, and charging for it would be unconventional to the point of making it hard to find support for that solution.
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        Charging money for access to transportation is very politically biased: people with low or no income are effectively denied transportation while people with high income are not discouraged. This is how slums are created. > If someone knows of a different solution, I'd like to know Some cities have areas that allow unlimited access to locals and deliveries and limited access to others (X times per year)
        kqr 5y ago
        Yes, that's a problem. I've debated with myself over what would be a fair division of "limited access" in my case but not arrived at a satisfactory solution. Anything I can think of will devolve into an inefficient, sucky, inofficial market. (This is why I'm contemplating an efficient, less sucky, official market in the first place.) To be clear: the infrastructure I'm working on isn't transport, but it'd still be odd to only allow paying users. I was thinking two similar copies of this piece infrastructure, where one is priced to avoid congestion, and the other will be as congested as induced demand allows. I'd like the discussion to stay general because I suspect any solutions will be reusable.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    In a city, yes. In a suburb, the solution isn't anything except building more and better roads. People aren't bicycling 10-15 miles to the grocery. They should be, but, that's a different societal problem.
    - oscardssmith 5y ago
      In suburbs, we shouldn't have grocery stores be that far from people.
      - OwlsParlay 5y ago
        Welcome to American zoning laws, sadly.
    - adamjb 5y ago
      ...are there really places in the US that are considered suburbs where the nearest place to get groceries is 10-15 miles away? That's appalling.
      - other_herbert 5y ago
        I think most people would call that “the middle of nowhere” or out in the boonies... or it could be a new area that is growing.. 15 miles from groceries is too far to be called a suburb
        masklinn 5y ago
        > I think most people would call that “the middle of nowhere” or out in the boonies... Not in the US. In the US "in the middle of nowhere" is grocery runs of 50+ miles. 15 miles is a "far out" suburbian hellscape e.g. https://i1.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1080/1*AEfVhyvwGyqDmnZcAQfIGg.png?resize=398%2C264&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1080/1*AEfVhyv... or https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/h2N-h_4kbaMMps_4ou05IwXb6tM=/1024x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/Z4IGXQBGAII6HALMQUI2U2GARA.jpg https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/h2N-h...
  - choward 5y ago
    It also encourages people to live further from where they work which also adds to traffic.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Of course, it does also mean more people are able to use the road (or canal). So it’s not a complete loss, even if it doesn’t have the intended effect. It really comes down to whether you want to encourage or discourage the use of the infrastructure.
- hdjfntnrn 5y ago
  That's like saying that building houses doesn't solve the housing crisis because they are immediately bought. Are you suggesting that Istanbul or London would be just fine with a single bridge?
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > That's like saying that building houses doesn't solve the housing crisis because they are immediately bought. I'm not sure Jevon's paradox applies to houses, whereas it absolutely applies to car traffic.
    - hdjfntnrn 5y ago
      Like it or not, that increased car traffic delivers more utility. You can't have a car free metropolis. That's a contradiction.
      - masklinn 5y ago
        > Like it or not, that increased car traffic delivers more utility. It rarely delivers enough utility to even compensate for it costs. > You can't have a car free metropolis. That's a contradiction. It's absolutely not, your assertion is outright nonsensical. Car-centricity is by far the worst way to build a metropolis.
        ben_w 5y ago
        “Car free” is one of several ways to not be “car-centric”, but not the only way. I believe it’s possible to make a car-free metropolis, but I don’t know if any (modern) metropolis demonstrates this.
        masklinn 5y ago
        Sure but I’m not the one which set up this straw man dichotomy and saw no reason to care for or acknowledge it.
      - 5y ago
- belatw 5y ago
  Well the third bridge was built as a gift to Tayipp’s friends who bought up all of the land near it before he announced it as one of his “crazy projects”. It’s kind of in the missle of nowhere. My understanding is it didnt have any impact positively or negatively. Speaking of which, whatever happened to the EV, pedestrian and bicycle tunnel under tje bosfora starting at kabatas which he claimed would be finished 2 years ago, along woth the 4 levant metro extension.
toyg 5y ago
Yeah, that’s the problem. Realistically, the only solution is Suez and Panama agreeing on a common size, which would become the de-facto upper size for shipping boats, and then implement it. It could even be smaller than what they have at the moment, the important part is that it’s common so the straits can be managed consistently and safely.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  The whole shipping facilities industry is being pushed by the shipping companies to widen/deepen canals and ports. It's a bit of a rat race. But as the Evergiven incident has shown, it has a limit. We were lucky it didn't get stuck worse than it has.
  - hdjfntnrn 5y ago
    > We were lucky it didn't get stuck worse than it has At some point it makes sense to just blow up the ship to free the channel.
    - joshuahedlund 5y ago
      Real life is not like video games. Blowing something up doesn’t make it disappear; it could actually spread debris chunks everywhere and (in addition to the collateral damage factor) make the problem worse
      - Kye 5y ago
        People just don't get the scale of things like this, do they? Ever Given is taller than the canal is deep when empty. Blow it to bits and you'll get some bits that are at least as deep as the canal.
    - Digit-Al 5y ago
      I am genuinely interested in learning how you think that could possibly be workable. The reason I ask is that I am not particularly knowledgeable about either explosives or the canal but I can instantly envision a number of reasons why such a course of action would be completely unworkable. I think it's always interesting to get another perspective and I am somewhat disappointed that people have downvoted you without even wanting to hear your reasons. Such conversations are always an opportunity to either learn or to teach for those that are open to it.
dale_glass 5y ago
There are practical limits to how big a ship can be. Apparently they're already about as long as steel can take, so they're getting wider instead. So for the Suez that'd mean there shouldn't be any danger of that happening. The EverGiven was stuck length-wise, and if they're not getting longer then at worst they can become square, which is probably not the right shape for a ship.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Apparently they're already about as long as steel can take, so they're getting wider instead. How does a ship being longer cause stress on the steel?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Out on the ocean there are waves - if the ship is between two of them it acts like a bridge and the steel has to support the weight or snap in two.
    - usrusr 5y ago
      But there's an obvious solution to that: more steel. Still, a far more effective solution would be increase width and draught likewise to reach your target volume. And that's where we're back at ${canal}max classes (locks also impose a length limit but I'd assume that those are much easier to adapt than width/depth). If Suez Canal authorities are serious about trying to prevent future Ever Given incidents (how serious they are likely depends on the exact outcome of the ongoing liability fights) they should keep some parts of the canal at the existing profile (locks perhaps?) to prevent suezmax 2.0 (or whatever their current version+1 is)
      - manquer 5y ago
        More steel/thicker/different steel is expensive, as is say some other material like carbon fiber composites . We could make a much bigger , lighter efficient ship with carbon fiber entirely, however there is no economic incentive to spend 100x on the ship, fuel costs and economies of scale rtc don't help recover that capital cost
krisoft 5y ago
Sorry, but that's not how it works. Containerships don't conform to the canal. Both the ships and the canal are made to conform to the standard. There is a document titled Rules of Navigation issued by the Suez Canal Authority which defines the maximum dimensions for the vessels authorised to transit. You can read it yourself: https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/FlipPDFDocuments/Rules%20of%20Navigation.pdf https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/FlipPDFDocuments/Rules%20of%20N... (it's on the 90th page as the pdf reader numbers them, or 68th by the document's internal numbering) Based on what you say it sounds like you think the current limits are experimentally found. As if ship owners build all kind of ships and then try to cram them through the channel and see which one goes. That would be madness.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  > Containerships don't conform to the canal. Containerships absolutely do conform to the canals. Lots of ships are built to the maximum size that can transit the Panama or Suez canals. It's called Panamax and Suezmax ships. When the Panama canal was expanded, that caused larger ships to be built to the new specifications of the canal (called new Panamax). If this expansion causes the maximum dimensions allowed through the Suez canal to be increased, ships will be built to that larger standard.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    I want to see a ship that's the width of the Panama Canal, but like 10x taller, called Panaminmax.
    - krisoft 5y ago
      :) That's a good name. In reality, the maximum air draft (how much the ship is sticking out over the water) is also limited by the Panamamax standard. It is constrained because the ships has to go under bridges and some cables too while crossing the canal.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    You are very kind to explain the Panamax and Suezmax concepts to me. I can assure you I'm familiar with them. When you order a ship and you stipulate that it must be able to cross the Suez Canal the shipyard won't send out two dudes with a theodolite to measure how wide the canal is. They will look up the standard (the very same I have just linked!) and build the ship to that specification. That is to say the ships conform to the standard not to the canal. Similarly if you are engineer working for the SCA how do you know when to dredge the canal? Easy. You read the same standard and you dredge where ships of the published maximum size would not fit. Likewise you check the published air draft maximums before designing over-water electric transmission crossings. That is to say you make the canal conform to the standard. > If this expansion causes the maximum dimensions allowed through the Suez canal to be increased... True. But there is zero reason why the SCA would be coy about announcing a neo-Suezmax standard if that is what they would be wanting to do. In fact they would float any such plans years and years in advance, because vessels are not built in a day. I have seen no indication for that.
gambiting 5y ago
There's an extremely easy solution to this - just don't increase the width of the entry and exit points.
- em-bee 5y ago
  that doesn't help. the problem was the length of the ship, not its width. a narrow entry point does not limit the length.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    But physics already limit the length of the ship, no? You can't make the current container ships any longer without also making them wider, so if you restrict the width you are also kind of restricting the length, at least with current technology.
refurb 5y ago
I assume they’ll widen the parts of the canal that are easy (long stretches with either no or minimal reinforcement of the banks) and leave stuff like the locks themselves alone as I doubt their easy to widen at all.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  The Suez canal does not have locks.
  - refurb 5y ago
    So it doesn’t! Then I’ll refine my statement to bridges and such.
rocqua 5y ago
Suezmax is the biggest that is allowed through Suez, not the biggest that will fit. If the authorities don't change the max they will allow, then no new class of ships will emerge.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Yeah, I think that's the point DuskStar is making, how long until they change the max (effectively bringing in a new era of new new suezmax)?

This would be then very similar to the Bosphorus bridge problem in Istanbul. A bridge wasn't enough, so they built the second. After it's opened, came a spike in car sales so that it wasn't enough way sooner than expected, so they built a third bridge, completion of which is followed by a spike in car sales, despite the economical situation.

DC-3 5y ago
This problem generalises and is why building more, bigger roads is not a silver bullet solution to congestion. More road capacity pushes people towards using cars for all their journeys so increases traffic, sometimes to the extent that congestion is worsened not lessened.
- triska 5y ago
  This phenomenon is known as the Jevons paradox, named after British logician, economist and statistician William Stanley Jevons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Traffic/travel is a relatively special case though... We have a near unlimited ability to consume transport. If you could get to Japan in 20m, I would probably pop over for lunch right now or Vladivostok for a Sunday stroll. As transport improves, people work/shop/etc further from home. Commuting range is measured in time, not kms. So, capacity (eg traffic) tends to be the balancing force. That's more than the typical Jevons Paradox, I think.
    - Tomte 5y ago
      For traffic you've got the even more interesting Braess's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
    - maxsilver 5y ago
      It's more the opposite special case -- we have a hard cap on our ability to consume transport, which is why it's usually a good idea to build more. You can own 2, or 20, or 200 houses, and block the usage of them from anyone else. (induced demand with unlimited consumption). You can own 2 or 20 or 200 cars, but you can't physically drive more than one at a time. This is a hard cap on transportation consumption (you can't literally drive two cars at once, you can't be going to two different places at the same time) This is why the induced demand philosophy doesn't work for cars. Demand for transit has a low hard cap. If your society is broken such that there's lots of latent unserved demand, it will artificially look like there's induced demand happening near the beginning. But that demand will vanish as soon as you get close to a functional level of capacity. For a more practical example: If you could get to Japan in 20m, then you might choose to do so, And if you could go to lunch in Japan, you can't also be having lunch in California, which means you can't be waiting in traffic on the Bay Bridge. The induced demand philosophy obsesses over the "downside" of improved transit (that you get to go to cooler places faster and cheaper), but intentionally ignores the upside (that you free up the capacity of whatever you had chosen to do prior, and now no longer do).
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        I doubt we could build enough capacity for all cars to be on the road at once, which seems to be where the hard cap would kick in.
      - dalbasal 5y ago
        Think of travel consumption in terms of kms, not cars, trains or whatnot. Waiting in a traffic jam is not traveling. You can own 20 houses, not renting them out. People just wouldn't, because it's pointless. You could also own 97 iphones, or 400 pairs of jeans. Latent demand just that people would buy more if it was cheaper. That's normal, not broken. IDk what "artificially look like there's induced demand happening" means. If we could we would travel many more KMs. 1000s of times more, if teleporting existed and made travel instantaneous. The cost of travel, is largely time.
- martingoodson 5y ago
  This is called ‘induced demand’. Surprisingly, the opposite happens when you remove road capacity - which is called ‘traffic evaporation’. It’s why taking road space from cars and reallocating it to bicycles is often more successful than predicted: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf
  - kqr 5y ago
    Removing capacity from infrastructure is a solution that works when you want to discourage use of that infrastructure. If that's not the case, I only know of one other solution: charge directly for usage. That way you can set the price such that demand stays at a high level, but at one supported by maximum available capacity. If someone knows of a different solution, I'd like to know -- I have an induced demand problem in a type of infrastructure that I would like to operate at high capacity, and charging for it would be unconventional to the point of making it hard to find support for that solution.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      Charging money for access to transportation is very politically biased: people with low or no income are effectively denied transportation while people with high income are not discouraged. This is how slums are created. > If someone knows of a different solution, I'd like to know Some cities have areas that allow unlimited access to locals and deliveries and limited access to others (X times per year)
      - kqr 5y ago
        Yes, that's a problem. I've debated with myself over what would be a fair division of "limited access" in my case but not arrived at a satisfactory solution. Anything I can think of will devolve into an inefficient, sucky, inofficial market. (This is why I'm contemplating an efficient, less sucky, official market in the first place.) To be clear: the infrastructure I'm working on isn't transport, but it'd still be odd to only allow paying users. I was thinking two similar copies of this piece infrastructure, where one is priced to avoid congestion, and the other will be as congested as induced demand allows. I'd like the discussion to stay general because I suspect any solutions will be reusable.
- atatatat 5y ago
  In a city, yes. In a suburb, the solution isn't anything except building more and better roads. People aren't bicycling 10-15 miles to the grocery. They should be, but, that's a different societal problem.
  - oscardssmith 5y ago
    In suburbs, we shouldn't have grocery stores be that far from people.
    - OwlsParlay 5y ago
      Welcome to American zoning laws, sadly.
  - adamjb 5y ago
    ...are there really places in the US that are considered suburbs where the nearest place to get groceries is 10-15 miles away? That's appalling.
    - other_herbert 5y ago
      I think most people would call that “the middle of nowhere” or out in the boonies... or it could be a new area that is growing.. 15 miles from groceries is too far to be called a suburb
      - masklinn 5y ago
        > I think most people would call that “the middle of nowhere” or out in the boonies... Not in the US. In the US "in the middle of nowhere" is grocery runs of 50+ miles. 15 miles is a "far out" suburbian hellscape e.g. https://i1.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1080/1*AEfVhyvwGyqDmnZcAQfIGg.png?resize=398%2C264&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1080/1*AEfVhyv... or https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/h2N-h_4kbaMMps_4ou05IwXb6tM=/1024x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/Z4IGXQBGAII6HALMQUI2U2GARA.jpg https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/h2N-h...
- choward 5y ago
  It also encourages people to live further from where they work which also adds to traffic.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Of course, it does also mean more people are able to use the road (or canal). So it’s not a complete loss, even if it doesn’t have the intended effect. It really comes down to whether you want to encourage or discourage the use of the infrastructure.
hdjfntnrn 5y ago
That's like saying that building houses doesn't solve the housing crisis because they are immediately bought. Are you suggesting that Istanbul or London would be just fine with a single bridge?
- masklinn 5y ago
  > That's like saying that building houses doesn't solve the housing crisis because they are immediately bought. I'm not sure Jevon's paradox applies to houses, whereas it absolutely applies to car traffic.
  - hdjfntnrn 5y ago
    Like it or not, that increased car traffic delivers more utility. You can't have a car free metropolis. That's a contradiction.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      > Like it or not, that increased car traffic delivers more utility. It rarely delivers enough utility to even compensate for it costs. > You can't have a car free metropolis. That's a contradiction. It's absolutely not, your assertion is outright nonsensical. Car-centricity is by far the worst way to build a metropolis.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        “Car free” is one of several ways to not be “car-centric”, but not the only way. I believe it’s possible to make a car-free metropolis, but I don’t know if any (modern) metropolis demonstrates this.
        masklinn 5y ago
        Sure but I’m not the one which set up this straw man dichotomy and saw no reason to care for or acknowledge it.
    - 5y ago
belatw 5y ago
Well the third bridge was built as a gift to Tayipp’s friends who bought up all of the land near it before he announced it as one of his “crazy projects”. It’s kind of in the missle of nowhere. My understanding is it didnt have any impact positively or negatively. Speaking of which, whatever happened to the EV, pedestrian and bicycle tunnel under tje bosfora starting at kabatas which he claimed would be finished 2 years ago, along woth the 4 levant metro extension.

toyg 5y ago

Yeah, that’s the problem. Realistically, the only solution is Suez and Panama agreeing on a common size, which would become the de-facto upper size for shipping boats, and then implement it. It could even be smaller than what they have at the moment, the important part is that it’s common so the straits can be managed consistently and safely.

raverbashing 5y ago
The whole shipping facilities industry is being pushed by the shipping companies to widen/deepen canals and ports. It's a bit of a rat race. But as the Evergiven incident has shown, it has a limit. We were lucky it didn't get stuck worse than it has.
- hdjfntnrn 5y ago
  > We were lucky it didn't get stuck worse than it has At some point it makes sense to just blow up the ship to free the channel.
  - joshuahedlund 5y ago
    Real life is not like video games. Blowing something up doesn’t make it disappear; it could actually spread debris chunks everywhere and (in addition to the collateral damage factor) make the problem worse
    - Kye 5y ago
      People just don't get the scale of things like this, do they? Ever Given is taller than the canal is deep when empty. Blow it to bits and you'll get some bits that are at least as deep as the canal.
  - Digit-Al 5y ago
    I am genuinely interested in learning how you think that could possibly be workable. The reason I ask is that I am not particularly knowledgeable about either explosives or the canal but I can instantly envision a number of reasons why such a course of action would be completely unworkable. I think it's always interesting to get another perspective and I am somewhat disappointed that people have downvoted you without even wanting to hear your reasons. Such conversations are always an opportunity to either learn or to teach for those that are open to it.

dale_glass 5y ago

There are practical limits to how big a ship can be. Apparently they're already about as long as steel can take, so they're getting wider instead. So for the Suez that'd mean there shouldn't be any danger of that happening. The EverGiven was stuck length-wise, and if they're not getting longer then at worst they can become square, which is probably not the right shape for a ship.

gruez 5y ago
>Apparently they're already about as long as steel can take, so they're getting wider instead. How does a ship being longer cause stress on the steel?
- bombcar 5y ago
  Out on the ocean there are waves - if the ship is between two of them it acts like a bridge and the steel has to support the weight or snap in two.
  - usrusr 5y ago
    But there's an obvious solution to that: more steel. Still, a far more effective solution would be increase width and draught likewise to reach your target volume. And that's where we're back at ${canal}max classes (locks also impose a length limit but I'd assume that those are much easier to adapt than width/depth). If Suez Canal authorities are serious about trying to prevent future Ever Given incidents (how serious they are likely depends on the exact outcome of the ongoing liability fights) they should keep some parts of the canal at the existing profile (locks perhaps?) to prevent suezmax 2.0 (or whatever their current version+1 is)
    - manquer 5y ago
      More steel/thicker/different steel is expensive, as is say some other material like carbon fiber composites . We could make a much bigger , lighter efficient ship with carbon fiber entirely, however there is no economic incentive to spend 100x on the ship, fuel costs and economies of scale rtc don't help recover that capital cost

krisoft 5y ago

Sorry, but that's not how it works. Containerships don't conform to the canal. Both the ships and the canal are made to conform to the standard. There is a document titled Rules of Navigation issued by the Suez Canal Authority which defines the maximum dimensions for the vessels authorised to transit. You can read it yourself: https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/FlipPDFDocuments/Rules%20of%20Navigation.pdf https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/FlipPDFDocuments/Rules%20of%20N... (it's on the 90th page as the pdf reader numbers them, or 68th by the document's internal numbering) Based on what you say it sounds like you think the current limits are experimentally found. As if ship owners build all kind of ships and then try to cram them through the channel and see which one goes. That would be madness.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
> Containerships don't conform to the canal. Containerships absolutely do conform to the canals. Lots of ships are built to the maximum size that can transit the Panama or Suez canals. It's called Panamax and Suezmax ships. When the Panama canal was expanded, that caused larger ships to be built to the new specifications of the canal (called new Panamax). If this expansion causes the maximum dimensions allowed through the Suez canal to be increased, ships will be built to that larger standard.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I want to see a ship that's the width of the Panama Canal, but like 10x taller, called Panaminmax.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    :) That's a good name. In reality, the maximum air draft (how much the ship is sticking out over the water) is also limited by the Panamamax standard. It is constrained because the ships has to go under bridges and some cables too while crossing the canal.
- krisoft 5y ago
  You are very kind to explain the Panamax and Suezmax concepts to me. I can assure you I'm familiar with them. When you order a ship and you stipulate that it must be able to cross the Suez Canal the shipyard won't send out two dudes with a theodolite to measure how wide the canal is. They will look up the standard (the very same I have just linked!) and build the ship to that specification. That is to say the ships conform to the standard not to the canal. Similarly if you are engineer working for the SCA how do you know when to dredge the canal? Easy. You read the same standard and you dredge where ships of the published maximum size would not fit. Likewise you check the published air draft maximums before designing over-water electric transmission crossings. That is to say you make the canal conform to the standard. > If this expansion causes the maximum dimensions allowed through the Suez canal to be increased... True. But there is zero reason why the SCA would be coy about announcing a neo-Suezmax standard if that is what they would be wanting to do. In fact they would float any such plans years and years in advance, because vessels are not built in a day. I have seen no indication for that.

gambiting 5y ago

There's an extremely easy solution to this - just don't increase the width of the entry and exit points.

em-bee 5y ago
that doesn't help. the problem was the length of the ship, not its width. a narrow entry point does not limit the length.
- gambiting 5y ago
  But physics already limit the length of the ship, no? You can't make the current container ships any longer without also making them wider, so if you restrict the width you are also kind of restricting the length, at least with current technology.

refurb 5y ago

I assume they’ll widen the parts of the canal that are easy (long stretches with either no or minimal reinforcement of the banks) and leave stuff like the locks themselves alone as I doubt their easy to widen at all.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
The Suez canal does not have locks.
- refurb 5y ago
  So it doesn’t! Then I’ll refine my statement to bridges and such.

rocqua 5y ago

Suezmax is the biggest that is allowed through Suez, not the biggest that will fit. If the authorities don't change the max they will allow, then no new class of ships will emerge.

capableweb 5y ago
Yeah, I think that's the point DuskStar is making, how long until they change the max (effectively bringing in a new era of new new suezmax)?