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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
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!
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.
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.
“I get my kicks… on Canal 66.”
Goodbye, Kentucky
Actually, guys, maybe we should hear them out?
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?
I feel like there has to be an easier way to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
This will require more bridges, which creates more jobs. It’s genius!
A lot of the canals in the world (the majority I think, but please fact check that) were built in the 19th century. So yeah… with shovels.
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!
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.
With the low resolution I can’t quite tell if I would suddenly live on the beach or underwater
Depends on if you can outrun a shovel.
Literally described the Mississippi river.
If we could connect the Missouri to the Snake River we could do pretty much the same thing. There’s a seaport in Idaho already
Technically, it’s already done!
Time to get dredging!
Except the map makes it look like a thousand times wider than the Mississippi.
Most cost-effective would be to use the Photoshop eraser tool.
