Reflection of expanded Panama Canal to supply chains and port infrastructure in North America

Abstract

The enhancement of world maritime shipping leads to increasing of the time required for transit passage and impossibility of old locks in Panama Canal to serve the newest vessel’s generation. Many states in east and south-eastern part of the country, as Florida, Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina, are becoming attractive for business. They have made various investments and improvements in regional transport infrastructure to dominate over freight traffic in the region, such as dredging of port entrances and port basins, expansion of container terminals, and improving inland transport connections to the port. The goal of this article is to study how the design and construction of new set of locks on the Panama Canal affects to the global trade and further to the multimodal chains, transport infrastructure and ports along the East American Coast.