From now until April 10, large passenger ships travelling between Chongqing and Shanghai, and all cargo vessels, will be permitted to use the temporary shiplock at the dam, China News Service (Zhongguo xinwen she) reported Nov. 4. But for the next five months, passengers on ships going between Chongqing and Wuhan will have to disembark at the dam and transfer by bus to the train station in Yichang.

And, as of April 10, the next phase of construction will block the passage of all ships through the dam for 67 days. Before navigation through the dam resumes on June 15, an estimated 2.26 million passengers, or roughly 10,000 people a day, will have to make the transfer from boats to land transport, the news agency said.

The diversion channel that was created for ships to use while the dam was being built across the main stream of the Yangtze was blocked off on Nov. 6. Now, vessels that are allowed through the dam are using a temporary shiplock while construction continues on the permanent, five-step shiplock. (Nothing has been heard recently about the fate of plans for the world’s biggest shiplift, which was to have been built to hoist vessels over the high dam in only one massive step.)

The Three Gorges Corp., in conjunction with local transport agencies, has built five new ports just upstream of the dam near Maoping and purchased as many as 100 new luxury coaches to handle the passenger traffic, China News Service said. Four trains have also been added to the Yichang-Shanghai and Yichang-Guangzhou routes to accommodate the extra passengers, Xinhua news agency reported Nov. 8.

Luo Fangjin, vice-director of the Yichang Port Office, was quoted by China News Service as saying that although the disruption to navigation was the longest in the history of the Yangtze, travellers were unlikely to experience any inconvenience.

Shipping companies in Chongqing are sounding considerably less optimistic about the impending chaos on the river. They are particularly concerned about the April-June period when millions of tonnes of freight will have to be unloaded, moved overland and reloaded onto boats on the other side of the dam.

The companies’ repeated requests to the central government for assistance have fallen on deaf ears, the Chongqing Morning Post (Chongqing chenbao) reported Nov. 1. Six shipping agencies, including the Shanghai Port Office and Chongqing Shipping Group, put forward a joint request in August for a special port to be built upstream of the dam to handle containers. Although new passenger ports were built, the request for a container port was denied.The shipping agencies decided to pool their resources and build the US$1 million freight port on their own, without help from the government or the Three Gorges Corp., the newspaper said.

The shipping companies say the dam will only be able to handle about 60 per cent of normal freight volume during the 67-day interruption. The firms are also worried about the increased expenditures they face, and estimate that transporting a container from Chongqing to Shanghai will cost 50 per cent more than usual during the two months the dam is closed. And while the Chongqing-Shanghai trip normally takes a freighter seven days, an extra day or two will be needed during the period of disruption, adding further to costs.