When a ton of wheat

[HemantR606]

Source: GMAT Prep

When a ton of wheat was being moved from Buffalo to New York City before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it took three weeks and cost $100, but when the canal was used, it took less than eight days and cost less than $6.

A. When a ton of wheat was being moved from Buffalo to New York City before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it took three weeks and cost $100, but when the canal was used, it
B. Moving a ton of wheat from Buffalo to New York City before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it took three weeks and cost $100; using the canal, it
C. Before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, moving a ton of wheat from Buffalo to New York City took three weeks and cost $100; on the canal the move
D. In 1825, before opening the Erie Canal, to move a ton of wheat took three weeks from Buffalo to New York City, which cost $100; moving it on the canal
E. To move a ton of wheat in 1825 from Buffalo to New York City took three weeks before the opening of the Erie Canal, costing $100, but in using the canal, the move .


My doubts:

1. The parallelism around 'but' in the option 'A' looks very ugly. Can we eliminate 'A' solely on parallelism grounds? Is this parallelism really ugly? (When a ton of blah blah.. but when the canal was used...)

2. Do both the 'it's in 'A' require antecedents? They do according to https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/forums/post49622.html#p49622, but just need a confirmation as I am a bit confused.

3. If 'it' does require an antecedent, there is no appropriate antecedent for 'it' in the sentence because 'it' cannot refer to the movement. (Yes/No)

4. In 'E': 'To move.....took three weeks' construction is wordier than 'Moving...took'. But, is 'To move.....took three weeks' construction wrong?

5. '...,but in using the canal, the move took...' looks a bit awkward to me but I do not have a solid point to say that it is a wrong construction. Is it actually wrong?



Thanks a lot in advance.

[RonPurewal]

1/
parallelism is a beauty contest. if you see a choice in which the parallelism is CLEARLY BETTER, then eliminate the one that's worse. if you don't, then look for something else.

[RonPurewal]

2/
3/
yes, 'it' needs an antecedent.
clearly it is meant to refer to the process of moving, so there's no appropriate noun.

[RonPurewal]

before we discuss this any further—is this problem from the FREE gmat prep software? that's the only gmat prep software we can discuss here.

if it is, then please post a screenshot. thanks.

if it's from paid material, we can't use it.

(yes, i know it's inconvenient to post a screenshot—but it is very, very unusual to find a FREE problem that doesn't already have a thread here.)