The American Association of Ports Authorities cited the recently released American Society of Civil Engineers study that estimates the investment needed to dredge ports and inner harbors to be $30Billion. The Bayonne bridge project alone will cost $1.5B. The answer is in the last paragraph of this article, "transshipment"; we need to invest in offshore multi-use platforms to service these large vessels.

Transshipment eliminates the requirement to dredge harbors, raise bridges; and it can be achieved through the application of existing technologies at no cost to the taxpayer. 

More research relly needs to be done on this piece.  First, a small but salient point; these are ships, not boats.

Second post-panamax container ships have beeen in service since the mid 1980's when American President Line put the first designs in service to coincide with the implementation of their invovative double stack railcar.  In doing so, made the an all water shipment from Asia uneconomical.  Currently a ship is a "post-panamax" size if its container capacity in TEU (Twenty foot Equivalent Units) is greater than 4000 TEU.  According to Containerisaition International (June 2012) approximatley half of all container ship capacity was in post-panamax bottoms.  Containership capacity based on current orders through 2017 by 3.825 MM TEU of which 3.1 MM TEU will be post-panamax.

However, all post panamax ships are not the same.  The most notable segment, the over 16,000 TEU size are intended for the Asia Europe trades.  The 10,000 to 12,000 TEU segment will most likely be implemented on the Asia USWC trades.  The 8500 TEU and smaller classes will probably be used for the New Canal.

THis also means increased opportunity for invasive species.  WHere's the reasech on the ecological and economic costs of same??