New York just passed the halfway mark on its $1.3 billion project to raise the Bayonne Bridge, set to open in 2017. The aim is to attract mega ships, the ones now able to move through the expanded Panama Canal to the East Coast. But making room for these vessels with taller bridges and deeper harbors is just the beginning. The challenges start all over again when a giant ship actually docks.

"They’re taller than the Empire State Building, loaded with 13,000 trucks., essentially, and they’re massive," said Peter Califano, who operates a crane that moves cargo on and off these behemoths at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. West Coast ports have been receiving mega ships for years now, and may provide a model to New York, Charleston and other East Coast ports for how to handle them.

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