The Third Lane locks of the Panama Canal become operational in 2016. A total of 16 rolling gates are included in the project using double gates at each lock head. At a length of 57.6 meters and height varying between 22.3 and 33 meters, width of 8 meters and 10 meters and a structural weight varying between 2500 and 4200 metric tons a piece, the new Panama Canal lock gates are the largest in the world. The gates are 22 meters high at the lake level and up to 33 meters high at the ocean side. The rolling gates average speed is 11 meters per minute, so it takes a maximum of 5 minutes to open and close the gate across the 55 meters of chamber width. The Panama Canal Third Set of Locks has strict requirements for time and service to better serve its customers who demand high reliability and lane availability. The design requirements of the new locks requires a minimum of 99.6% of lane availability time. A major design issue to consider for these gates was very high seismic loading. The new rolling gates are a wheelbarrow type design but a unique feature is the removable lower carriage pulled out through the top of the gate. In order to do this, the load of the gate had to be transferred to the lower wheel carriage via a tall slender compression column and a load limiting device to prevent overloading the wheels. The load limiting device and compression column also have advantages from a seismic point of view. The seismic parameters for the gate design includes the compression column, running from the lower wagon to the top of the gate structure, with guides and clearances to provide lateral gate displacement under hydraulic load. After an earthquake event, the load limiting device will return to its original position to allow the gate to return to normal operation. This arrangement not only prevents the carriage overloading in case of an earthquake, it also adds more elasticity to that support and directs the eventual damage to the column, sparing the main structure of the gate, the carriage and its rails. One issue with the Panama removable carriage design is that to remove it requires a fairly compact lower carriage with small rail distances (track gauge). The carriage and the wheels cannot be any wider than the gate and in this case the spacing of the lower wheels is only 1600 mm which is fairly narrow for how tall and wide these gates are. This is possible thanks to the “assumed” absence of lateral loads on rails and is in fact the major advantage of the chosen system.