It should be pointed out that the northern part of the canal has a second canal running parallel. The southern portion is the only part that has only a single passage.

Political instability is definitely a contributing factor to the fragility of the southern corridor.

Israel at some point was considering setting up a rail track between Eilat and the rest of the country. The main benefit of doing so is that cargo ships could unload and Eilat (red sea) and have cargo transported to a port in the mediterranean sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_railway_to_Eilat

That plan was frozen after the Egypt-Israel peace agreement.

It's been floated after the peace treaty too; it's just unlikely to justify the massive cost, now that the strategic consideration of bypassing an Egyptian blockade is past.

Possibly current decarbonization movement makes a new canal plan better?

partially done already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Bypass_expansion

It's a lot further to dig, but the next best thing would be to dig from the Persian gulf through Iraq, Syria and probably Lebanon. Not forgetting half the Persian Gulf is Iran. It's not exactly the most stable geopolitical area.

A quick look suggests that the Tigris is mostly navigable up to Baghdad, which would get you halfway there.

As an alternative (and ignoring the obviously substantial geopolitical concerns), is there a geographic reason not to dig a canal on the other side of the Sinai from, say, Aqaba to Rafah? If you had to dig that far, it would seem to be the next best option.

It's kind of hard to tell, but it looks like the Suez canal was on super flat land and I recall most of Sinai is desert. The Israel-Egypt border doesn't look that flat based on the colouring on the leading image of [1].

1. https://www.npr.org/2007/06/04/10619929/six-day-war-shaping-...

I mean, the alternative proposal was a canal through the ~3rd most violent region on the planet.

Absolutely, I imagine the insurance alone would make the Persian Gulf route unviable. Pirates is one thing, but governments confiscating boats would be a huge disincentive. The other side of the Sinai is probably much more palatable even if Egypt and Israel aren't best buddies.

Not to mention the terrorism/sabotage/non-state actor destruction opportunities that route would present that are moderately prevented on the Red Sea side (if you can get past the Horn of Africa).

I can't see Egypt approving an alternate canal that Israel would have any control over, but I could absolutely see Israel going in on a chance to a) take business from Egypt and b) add a defensive feature along that border.

Both a) and b) would require a real increase in tensions. Israel and Egypt have a cold peace, with several common enemies/interests; the prospect of a direct military confrontation is nil, and neither side will go out of their way to harm the other economically.

The terrain along the Negev route is extremely hostile. Bypass proposals have mostly focused on rail lines from Eilat/Aqaba to the large and well-developed Israeli ports on the Mediterranean, but even constructing rail lines there is quite difficult.

An underappreciated fact of Israeli and Palestinian geography is its mountains and hills; any major transportation project [1] requires extensive tunnel and bridge work.

[1] Examples: the TLV/Jerusalem high speed rail, the Haifa highway bypass, or a proposed transportation corridor connecting the main West Bank population centers along the ridge of the Judean and Samarian mountain ranges.

I'm not sure there's a path that's flat enough to make it practical even if everything else falls into place somehow.

I think you massively underestimate the cost (land, machinery, labor, upkeep) of undertaking such a project.

We did it with the Panama Canal a century ago. Granted, the Suez Canal is ~190km compared to the Panama Canal at ~80km, but it is possible.

I'm a layman, but it seems like there are probably other preventative measures that are way cheaper.

A Bloomberg article (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-27/how-a-des...) says the speed limit was 7.6 to 8.6 knots but the Ever Given was traveling at 13.5 knots. So maybe they need to start enforcing that limit.

Reportedly this was during high winds, so they could also reduce the speed limit even further in those conditions.

Or they could have Suez specialists be the ones piloting large ships through the canal rather than the ship's normal crew. (As I understand it, that's pretty standard for harbors. Not sure if the Suez already does that.)

Or maybe there's a technology solution, something like stability control for cars, except it's for ships in narrow canals.

The slower the boat travels, the closer to the wind it has to point in order to avoid being pushed into the leeward shore. (assuming it doesn't have significant thrust-vectoring capabilities at both the bow and the stern which as far as I can tell seems to be the case for large cargo ships)

Because the boat is longer than the canal is wide, for any nonzero perpendicular wind speed there is a minimum boat speed below which it would not be able to avoid running aground. The solution is to either not permit such large ships to transit the canal during high wind events or to send them with enough tugboats to counteract the force of the wind.

As is standard for canal transit, the Evergiven was piloted by a Suez pilot at the time of the accident. Because this ship's main steering force comes from the rudder, it has more force when it goes faster. Maybe they even accelerated to counter the strong winds.

Navigating canals and major harbours requires a pilot.

Pilot was on board, but there seems to have been some kind of conflict between Master and Pilot that resulted in high tension environment on the bridge.

Ever Given Master’s statement is published here, and has been circulating among the crews for a few days: http://www.maritimebulletin.net/2021/03/28/ever-given-latest...

So, some weird drama. If this is true, however, this would be a gross misconduct of behalf of the Pilot.

I don't see how the report in the linked article is related to Ever Given. It certainly isn't of the fateful trip because it's about a southbound journey.

It contains a report of the behavior of the local Pilots that are supposed guide the ship through the canal.

Last line before the report

>Read this Statement and ask yourself – can such incident lead to accident like grounding or collision?

If the professionals are not doing their job and even causing issues on the bridge;

i.e. >As soon as the master picked up the VHF and called Ismalia Port Control on Ch8, the pilot raised his volume high, started shouting, snatched the VHF from the master’s hand (which also resulted in advertently pushing the Master) and threatened that if same was reported “It will not be good for the vessel”.

>At that very moment, in his raised volume he called for fwd and aft stations and for both anchors to be lowered to water level, as he insisted on stopping the vessel and arresting vessel for faulty steering. He said vessel will be held at Bitter lake until sea trials were carried out. Fwd station was immediately manned however anchors were not lowered as ship was doing 9 knots speed.

Then it could lead to accidents.

I find that the difficult conditions at the time are sufficient to explain the accident. Maybe we'll learn that there was unprofessional behaviour by a pilot. But until such time, that is unwarranted speculation.

The linked article is a hodgepodge of random factoids and hearsay. It even confused the poster into thinking the report was from the Ever Given. Doesn't look like a good source to me.

From what I heard they’ve suffered a blackout which is an event when your power goes out.

Friends scientific boat had a same thing in Kiel canal, but only 22 meter boat and under and hour.

>it seems like there are probably other preventative measures that are way cheaper.

Like doing nothing, and sailing around Africa in the extremely rare case there's a problem.

Makes me think of: https://xkcd.com/1205/

Where do you propose building this extra canal?

Cue Elon Musk promising to build a tunnel version of it for $5 million total cost, opening fall 2022.

Of course everything has to be repacked into little tubes and back into containers on the other end, but let's not let these things get in the way of a solid plan. Elon Musk!