Welland By-Pass west and by the by-pass channel to the east. Welland By-Pass The Welland By-pass, completed in 1973, was a massive construction project on the Welland Canal in Ontario, Canada. A new channel long was constructed, providing a shorter, more direct alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. The project helped improve navigation along the canal and alleviated problems the presence of a busy ship canal was causing in Welland. Although the city of Welland had originally grown around the canal, by the 1960s the constant interruptions in the flow of the vehicular and rail traffic through
Welland Canal a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large 'superlock'. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present Welland Ship Canal was originally designed to only last until 2030, almost 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal. Subsequent improvements to the canal infrastructure mean that