Tag Archives: Miraflores Locks

The Third Set of Canal Locks

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Currently the Panama Canal has two ‘lanes’ for vessels, each with its own set of locks (one set for at either end for vessels travelling from the Pacific to the Caribbean, and one set for ships travelling the opposite direction. As part of the canal expansion, a third set of locks will be added at either end of the canal, one on the Pacific side to the southwest of the existing Miraflores Locks, the other to the east of the existing Gatun Locks.

As might be expected 100 years after the original locks were built, the new sets are considerably more modern in design. Each chamber will have three lateral water-saving basins, for a total of nine basins per lock and 18 basins total. Like the existing locks, these will be filled by gravity, but unlike the existing locks, the water-saving basins will allow the used water to be recycled, rather than just being allowed to flow into the oceans.

10 Years in design, the new lock chambers will be 1,400 ft (426.72 m) long, by 180 ft (54.86 m) wide, and 60 ft (18.29 m) deep. They will use rolling gates instead of miter gates, the swinging gates which are used by the existing locks. Rolling gates are used in almost all existing locks with dimensions similar to those being proposed, and are a well-proven technology. The new locks will use tugboats to position the vessels instead of locomotives. As in the case of the rolling gates, tugs are successfully and widely utilized for these purposes in locks of similar dimensions.

In a recent interview, Nick Pansic, one of the design engineers for the new locks said “The Third Set of Locks project really is the opportunity for the Panama Canal Authority to “unlock the bottle neck” on their current canal system. This project includes the largest water-saving basins ever designed or built and the highest design standards we have come across as international designers for lock projects. Specifically, we are designing for major earthquakes, and the design requirements are extremely high. We’ve been pioneering new technology to advance the design state of the practice – specifically for the lock walls, and also for the lock gates. The lock gates are massive steel structures, over three thousand tons each. Making these lock gates work under a highly seismic event has been a real challenge that the design team has come through with the help of 3D modeling.”

The Centennial Bridge

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For more than 30 years, the only fixed crossing of the Panama Canal was the Bridge of the Americas, and although this allowed two-lanes of traffic in each direction, it was not designed to cope with the levels of traffic that were using it by the end of the twentieth century. Originally, it carried around 9,500 vehicles per day, but by the time that the Centennial Bridge opened it was carrying more than 35,000 vehicles every day.

Since the Bridge of the Americas represented a major bottleneck in the Pan-American Highway, the Panamanian government decided that a second fixed crossing was needed, and in 2000, Panama’s Ministry of peoples Works invited tenders for a second canal crossing. The contract to construct the bridge was awarded in March 2002m and a very ambitious construction schedule was set in order that the bridge could be inaugurated on the 90th anniversary of the first ship transit of the Panama Canal by the cargo ship Ancon, on 15 August 1914.

The bridge was named for Panama’s centennial (100 year anniversary of the establishment of the independent nation), which occurred on 3 November 2003. The bridge was designed as a joint venture between T.Y. Lin International and the Louis Berger Group Inc, and constructed by German based Bilfinger Berger utilizing resources from its Australian subsidiary Baulderstone Hornibrook. Boston-based transportation architect Miguel Rosales from Rosales + Partners created the concept and initial aesthetic designs for the Panama-Centennial Bridge. Structural engineering contracts were awarded to Leonhardt, Andrä and Partner.

The bridge was inaugurated on schedule on 15 August 2004, although it was opened for traffic on 2 September 2005, when the new highways leading to it were finished. The bridge is designed to withstand the earthquakes which are frequently recorded in the canal area, and was built with the west tower approximately 50 meters inland to allow for the planned canal widening. The bridge is a cable stayed design with a total length of 1,052m and a central span of 420m. With 80 meters of clearance above the waters of the can, it is significantly higher than the Bridge of the Americas.

The Centennial Bridge is 15km north (inland) of the Bridge of the Americas, and crosses the famous Gaillard Cut section of the Panama Canal close to the Pedro Miguel locks. New road links connecting Arraijan in the west to Cerro Patacon in the east via the bridge, enabled the new bridge to provide the alleviation of traffic on the Bridge of Americas for which it was designed. The rapid construction schedule did prove to have some consequences, and in December 2010, the sub-standard construction of one of the access roads was demonstrated when heavy rains and flooding caused it to collapse.