Can you drive across the Panama Canal?

Travel Info
We were thinking of going to Brazil and were hoping to be able to drive our cars down there but then remembered the Panama canal and thought that you cant build a bridge across a canal with the locks system causse then none of the boats could get through. A source website would also really help but just the answer would help.

Travel Tips

Yep...there are two bridges, see below:

Built in 1962, Puente de las Americas (Bridge of the Americas) was the only road crossing point of the Panama Canal. When it first opened, 9,500 vehicles crossed the bridge daily; in 2004 this number reached 35,000. Carrying the Pan-American Highway, congestion across this existing bridge has prevented an efficient flow of traffic.

In response to this the Panamanian Ministry of Public Works invited consultants to submit design concepts for a second canal crossing in October 2000. A contract for the Puente Centenario (Centennial Bridge) was awarded in March 2002 to complete the bridge in just 29 months, in order that the first crossing of this new bridge will coincide with the 90th anniversary of the very first ship journey through the canal (the US cargo ship Ancon, on 15 August 1914).

The second crossing is located 15km north of the Puente de las Americas, close to the Pedro Miguel locks and Paraiso community and 22km from Panama City. The bridge, along with new freeway sections connecting Araijan in the west to Cerro Patacon in the east, is expected to remove 50% of the traffic from the old bridge. Source(s): http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/pr...

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Thanks for the info. I've crossed the Panama Canal twice, once in each direction and I don't recall seeing a bridge.