News

In what may be the world’s biggest traffic jam, cargo ships have been waiting as long as 10 days to get through the Panama Canal in recent months. But officials say the congestion is easing and the wait is now down to four days or less.“Unseasonably high demand” created the back-up, the Wall Street Journal reports. Fog and low water levels have also impacted the flow of ships, said the Panama Canal Authority, which brought on extra and postponed maintenance work to speed up traffic.

The Canal Authority said in a statement last week that it has reduced the number of waiting ships by 40 percent in recent weeks. Ships typically wait 24 to 36 hours to get through the Canal, the Journal reports.

The congestion has real implications for economies around the world. The ships going through the Canal provide many of the consumer goods sold through stores during the holiday season.

But not all shipping lines were affected. Many of the largest companies schedule appointments to move ships through the canal to avoid delays, the company reports.

Meanwhile, the Canal Authority says work on the $5 billion expansion project is now 95 percent complete and the final electro-mechanical installations are underway. The Authority says the expansion is still on schedule to open in April.

The Canal also released a new video of the expansion progress: