The canal and its role in the transit of large ships in the United States.

The accident of the Singapore-flagged Dali on the Key Bridge last Tuesday has prompted fresh questions about the risks big ships represent for American infrastructure.

The ship was a new, larger class that began sailing the route from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal in 2016, when the locks were expanded. In this sense, the Washington Post looked at how the expansion of the Panama Canal brought large ships to the ports of the United States.

The newspaper emphasized that Maryland officials saw the economic opportunity presented by the larger ships, making the long trip across the Chesapeake Bay more cost-effective.

“We knew the payoff would come Port of BaltimoreJames White, former executive director of the Maryland Port Authority, told the Washington Post.

The Panama Canal’s new locks, which can accommodate larger ships, opened in 2016, changing international supply chains. The acceptance of the new ships, which can accommodate up to 14,000 containers, required large investments.

As work in Panama progressed, American ports began installing larger cranes and dredging deeper harbors and canals.

“Planning for this took almost 10 years,” said Abe Eshkenazi, executive director of the Supply Chain Management Association, adding, “The readiness of America’s ports and related infrastructure had to be assessed.”

Officials failed to remember that the risk of a large ship hitting a bridge was a major consideration as East Coast ports rushed to build infrastructure to accommodate the giants that were becoming more common in maritime traffic.

Instead, efforts have focused on projects including dredging deeper shipping channels and a $1.7 billion plan to raise a 90-year-old bridge as port authorities raced to capture cargo carried in so-called neo-Panamax ships.

Even before the canal was widened, large ships used to crash into the bridges. In 2013, the 40,000-ton Overseas Reymar struck the Bay Bridge in the San Francisco area, according to a US Coast Guard report.

In the year the new locks opened in Panama, an International Monetary Fund report identified nearly $18 billion in investment in East Coast and Gulf ports, far more than the $5 billion it cost to expand Chanel alone.

However, Dali, of 95,000 gross tons, which passed Panama Canal en route to Baltimore, it was much higher, and experts say it’s unclear what additional safeguards could have prevented the fall.

They emphasize that today’s ships are faster, bigger and can have more impact than the ships of the past.