The Panama Canal, that is. In 2014, the canal will have a new lane open to ships triple the size of its current capacity, reports the Hartford Business Journal. Because ocean shipping is the cheapest form of transportation, an enhanced canal means suppliers don’t have to unload goods at West Cost ports and ship them across county by truck or rail. Connecticut, like the other East Cost states, stands to benefit from this traffic, but whether it does so depends on the state of its ports.
The article states that currently, “no Connecticut port is deep enough with adequate facilities to handle a container ship, nor is any set up to handle the larger volumes.” The Connecticut Maritime Coalition believes, however, that “with the right infrastructure improvements to Connecticut’s ports, the $5-billion state maritime industry could see a 50 percent increase in business by 2020.” The coalition believes a state port authority would be best suited to oversee those improvements.
