re: With today’s tech, can’t we just cut right through

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the Panama Canal? Like do away with the locks, cut straight through to make it much faster, and widen the canal. This would allow us to get goods way faster and circumvent those stupid Californians. Somebody tell me why this wouldn’t work? I mean, there are countries in the island-building business. Seems like we could cut a darn good ditch at least…

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21 miles of the 51 miles that make up the waterway that is called the Panama canal is not actually a canal. The locks take ship traffic up to the level of "Lake Gatum" were they transit 21 miles of the lake, and then enter locks to go back down to sea level on the other side. Cutting straight through would require draining this huge lake. Besides the short distance between the the two oceans the Panama canal was built where it is because the lake could be utilized to bridge the two points reducing construction time and cost.