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The expansion of the Panama Canal, a $5.3 billion project almost two years behind schedule and plagued by cost overruns and contractor disputes, is expected to be opened by the end of June, according to the agency that operates the waterway.

As much as 10% of container traffic from Asia could shift from to East Coast from West Coast ports by 2020 after the Panama Canal’s expansion next year, according to a new study.    

Vice President Joe Biden urged lawmakers and transportation stakeholders to invest in port-expansion projects to accommodate the large ships that will travel through the expanded Panama Canal next year.

The South Carolina Ports Authority said Oct. 20 it received the first ship call from a new consolidated East Coast-South America service that brings additional post-Panamax vessels to the Port of Charleston.

The head of the Panama Canal Authority said completion of the canal’s $5 billion expansion has been delayed until 2016, from a previously targeted late 2015 completion date, the Associated Press reported.

A Senior Democrat on a House panel examining the role private industry plays in transportation called on colleagues on July 10 to facilitate access to private funds for regional ports ahead of next year’s expansion of the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal Authority announced that the contractor building new locks for the expanded waterway agreed to restart its construction project Feb. 20.

ATLANTA — The Panama Canal expansion is expected to move forward on schedule despite an ongoing dispute with contractors over the project’s cost, an administrator for the Panama Canal Authority told an audience of transportation executives here last week.

The U.S. House on Oct. 23 passed the Water Resources Reform Development Act, authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with dredging and other improvements at ports that would allow massive cargo ships coming through a widened Panama Canal to dock.