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Panama Canal expansion to hurt intermodal?

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[quote user="vsmith"] <DIV>The Malacca channel can be dredged to increase its depth, thats old technology, someone should remind the Panamainians that the original canal was a major pain the A$$ to build due the absolutley lousy soil conditions in the hills the canal was dug thru, landslides are still a problem to this day. Also as  mentioned, I have to wonder just how vunerable to canals are to over use if they are wider and allow more fresh water to escape than the rain forest can resupply, there no mention of the possibility of adding a major pumping system to pump the water back up into the upper canal are instead of letting it just flow into the ocean like it does today.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As I remember currently only about 10% of todays ships are too big for the canal, only the largest oil tankers and the largest US warships are too big, and even with all the intermodel transfers, it still faster to ship a Europe bound container to Long Beach and have it sent acroos the country and reloaded onto another ship in Jersey than to stay on a ship thru the canal and onto a shlep across 2 more oceans to Europe. Plus, isn't most of the crap in these containers STAYING in America? There has been rumblings of building a new major port on the Mexican coast and upgrading road and rail routes to allow for direct shipping from the central Mexican coast straight up Mexico, into Texas and into the Mississippi valley into the center of the country, all this via dedicated rail and truck routes. Bypassing again the need for a wider canal to ship goods to the east coast.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Also There was a story this past week about renewed interest in building a direct rail route from China to Europe by filling in missing portions of an almost complete rail route, not using the Russian Trans-Siberian as its too far north but thru a further south route. How would this effect shipping worldwide if instead of a slow boat from China, goods could be put on a fast train to Europe?</DIV> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>Actually you can't dredge the Malacca Strait, the bottom is solid rock.  Anything can be done for a price but no one is seriously considering <EM>that </EM>one, yet.  And even if you could there's hardly a port in the world that could handle 25 meter drafts without appalling expense.  </P> <P>There are virtually no containers moving from Asia to Europe via North America.  They go through the Suez Canal.</P> <P>I'm not holding my breath on a rail route across Asia replacing ocean shipping to Europe to any degree of significance.  There are immense political, cultural, financial, and organizational problems to overcome.</P> <P>S. Hadid</P>
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