According to Xinhua News Agency in Yichang on June 17, the double-line five-grade ship lock of the Three Gorges has been on a safe operation for 13 years. According to statistics of the Yangtze River Three Gorges Navigation Bureau, in the 13 years, the Three Gorges ship lock has operated for 121,000 brakes, with 703,000 passages of ships and a cargo throughput of 916 million tons.

The responsible person of Yangtze River Three Gorges Navigation Bureau chief says that after the completion of the Three Gorges Reservoir, the conditions of the upstream of the Yangtze River Waterways have been remarkably improved and the demands of water transportation have increased. The Three Gorges ship lock was officially put into operation in 2003 and its annual freight volume climbed ever since. In 2011, the throughput of the Three Gorges ship lock exceeded 100 million tons for the first time, 19 years ahead of the schedule to achieve the design standards.

As the stable implementation of Western Region Development Strategy of our country and the full effect of the Yangtze River Golden Waterway, the lock demands have grown steadily in recent years. It is normalized for the cargo throughput of the Three Gorges ship lock to exceed one hundred million tons. Its annual throughput of 2014, 2015 both reached 120 million tons and the cargo throughput for first five months of 2016 increased by 5.8%

In 2015, the ship draft of the Three Gorges ship lock realizes the control of 4.3 meters the whole year, thus improving the efficiency of it. The cargo volume for average brake time increases from less than 4,000 tons in the early operation period up to 10,845 tons. (Reporter Tan Yuanbin)