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Americans will literally do anything except build trains
4 kms across the ocean:
now that we have this river across the whole country, we can finally introduce swimming cars!
You mean plastic bubbles?
or normal cars in bubble wrap… see we’re already brainstorming like it’s a Tesla project
Oh no
You can create this strait and then have a train which runs along it, like the train from Spirited Away
What if we made some sort of floating train?
They’re nowhere near the top if you relate it to size though (and also next to none of it is electrified, which is a pretty good indicator of it being mostly old - after all, rail is what even allowrd the country to be built).
But also it’s a joke
I object to electrification being used to judge a country’s railway age and quality. A lot of countries transition into electric trains over a century ago especially in Europe and surprisingly the US. I could talk for hours about the US’s history with electric trains and how short sided business practices combined with the government’s attempt to sorta nationalize the rail industry crippled it’s electrification progress. Not to get too far off topic though there’s only three metrics you can really grade the quality and age of a nation’s rail infrastructure with. That is size, volume, and average speed. In my opinion though avarage speed is the best indicator for a country’s railway age and quality because it gets rid of a lot of the problems other definitions bring up. For example both of the internationally recognized definitions for high speed rail uses a different speed depending if the line was new (155mph) or upgraded (125mph). This causes all sorts of issues because under those definitions Amtrak’s northeast regional train counts as high speed rail as it runs on an upgraded line with a top speed of 125mph even though the northeast corridor has an average speed of 86mph.
Well, the Panama Canal is exactly that, built mostly that way.
Panama Canal is the biggest NIMBY project ever
Because it was built at the thinnest part of the content and used existing lakes?
Pretty sure Omaha would have loved an East\West canal across the continent.
Because it wasn’t done for or with the approval of locals
But it was done, which is kind of the opposite of NIMBY. Also it’s not a project that could go anywhere, except that no one wants it.
Closing Guantanamo was a NIMBY thing because, while everyone agrees it should happen, no one wanted the detainees in their backyard. (As ridiculous as that is.)
The Panama canal was a US NIMBY project I’d argue. Give us the canal but without impacting our territory.
Your comment is actually insane.
There is no way the US would not have preferred the canal to be in their backyard.
We didn’t maintain administration of the canal for just over a century for no reason. We would have put that shit in the Rio Grande, if we could have. Unfortunately that river runs dry for several months a year.
Especially since that particular area of the world is some of the least developed.
It connected several lakes in the narrowest part of the continent. Not ‘exactly that’ at all
If they could do it in ancient Greece then Americans can do it today for sure!
Stolen from [email protected]
Also: although planned over 2000 years ago, it wasn’t really made by ancient Greeks. They gave up and made a road to transport ships on it instead of actually digging. Only in modern time did they actually finish the canal
Wait… They had a movable pool that they rode the ships into and then horses dragged to the other waterway? That sounds awesome
They more or less put wheels on ships or rather loaded them on trailers and simply dragged them over land. Funny thing is that Thucydides (460 BC–395 BC) wrote about this, and described it as an ancient practice!
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/diolkos-ancient-trackway-that-carried.html?m=1
Better even. They made the movable pool quite long. So while the horses dragged the pool the ships could still sail in it. That way the horses didn’t need to drag the pool the whole way!
I dont think so. Not in this case at least. They gave up digging in the hard rock and instead made a limestone road to drive them on dry surface.
This is the Corinth canal but before it was made the paved road for transporting ships was called Diolkos
I know. I was just expanding on the other persons joke (I assume he joked). :)
You are a good person for being this patient and sharing your knowledge.
Oh sorry. My bad
if anything i think this is more impressive than digging a stupid canal
I love the 1950s, the solution to any problem was just “idk, have you tried nuking it?”
Definitely. And just like today with ‘ai’
This might also make it really easy to hit the 2 degree climate target.
More like the -2 degree Celcius average World temperature target.
Can’t just let them go to waste!
About 36 feet above sea level though. How are we gonna clear a waterway from coast to coast, though? C’mon, boffins, let’s sort this out!
Locks and dams. Thousands of miles of locks and dams.
Nah, I vote canel tunnel!
SHOVEL!
“I get my kicks… on Canal 66.”
You might need to account for an extra day or two to dig down low enough in the rocky mountains. Unless you’re working with a friend and they brought their own shovel.
Just get some pickaxes and dig a tunnel
This would also allow for a super cool water park. I’m all for it.
My first thought was if this was remotely possible on this scale, how many things would be disrupted and changed from the water movement alone. The Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences, but no way would you have locks spanning a few hundred miles across. This thing would have tides back and forth.
Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences
It’s actually mostly due to the landscape of Panama, including the lake it uses to traverse and the mountains. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans don’t different that much, maybe a few feet. And mostly due to tidal differences.
Oh, so it’s like an escalator for ships up and down.
Essentially yeah. Or a bunch of elevators up then down. Both descriptions work.
Plus literally chopping down a large stretch of both the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada would be insane.
Or could just go over tbh
You ever take your boat off any sweet water ramps?
Just made the entire river underground! A big underground river spanning thousands of miles. It’d require a hell of a lot more work but it wouldn’t disrupt things on the surface as much.
Imagine getting Ever Givened under Kansas.
My first thought too. This needs a Randall Monroe ‘What If?’ explanation.
There’s a sea level canal in Greece, the Corinth canal. And it has pretty strong tidal currents.
I wonder if, hypothetically, we could use such currents for more efficient power generation compared to the current tidal power generation.
Goodbye, Kentucky
Actually, guys, maybe we should hear them out?
…northern kentucky still northern kentucking, looks viable…
Assuming the river would be identical in depth and breadth to the Panama canal, if every man, woman, and child in the US picked up a shovel they would need to move 305 cubic feet of dirt each. So if we all just moved 1 cubic foot of dirt per day, we could pull this off in a year.
Hey, you’re a numbers guy right? What’s to say we take all that extra dirt and make an island? Asking for a friend
Hawa-II, this needs to happen. Opening date is June 13, 2025.
Let’s fucking goooo
That’s how the Soviet gulags built canals and railroads btw. Lots of deaths
Do it small scale first and turn Florida into an island.
Then push it away
The Caribbean has suffered enough
Then keep pushing it further into the Atlantic.
Until it crashes into England 🙏
Someone move Ireland south
No, not that far. Please stop in middle of the Atlantic. Or do you hope both sink?
That’s gonna be the weirdest Atlantis origin story
it could solve the water crisiseses
Dude all you need is 4 square meters and 2 water buckets
Infinite water glitch
Infinite food glitch
Would also solve some of the rising ocean levels too!
It annoys me that you’re correct
I think I’d hate to live downsteam from where the Mississippi is bisected.
I wonder if that river would remain salty for its entire existence
This will require more bridges, which creates more jobs. It’s genius!
I feel like there has to be an easier way to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
In which direction would it flow?
From the center to the borders, due to rain.
I wouldn’t be so certain about that. Evaporation might be stronger similar to the mediterreanian sea. So water would flow from both sides into the channel.
But such a project probably disturbes weather patterns and ocean currents all together. Hence, I don’t think we can be curtain until we’ve tried it. Now grab your shovel. FOR SCIENCE!
We need to be curtain!
LET US ALL BECOME CURTAINS
Woopsi
I mean ‘Weepsi’
Maybe the water would follow the Moon’s pull like a tide, so from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
It’d probably depend on the tide.
