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Joined: 2/19/2016
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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 7/8/2010
Posts: 23,364
Neurons: 94,766
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I can't see a ship canal boosting tourism. Or jobs, except in the building of it. Traditional canals are eco-friendly low-emissions transport, but this project sounds like it has a lot of opposition from the environmental impact side.. It does sound like a massive infrastructure investment with a limited range of uses. What Europe needs in the coming decades is more flood and drought mitigation, ie wetlands and de-canalisation. 
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/14/2018
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Canals used to be big business, but once railroads came along, i.e., by about 1850, their business decreased considerably. However, inland canals are still in use in many places. Canals are famous in folklore: e.g., the Erie Canal, connecting the upper Great Lakes with New York; the Panama and Suez Canals for seagoing ships; the Intracoastal Waterway from New England to Texas; and many others. One of Horatio Hornblower's adventures took place on a canal between the Severn and the Thames in southern England. A well known folksong presaged a famous movie start over a century before her birth:
I got a mule, her name is Sal.
(Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.)
She's a good old worker and a good old pal.
(Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.)
Lollobrigida, everybody down-jada,
Lollobrigida, 'cos we're coming to a town.
And you'll always know your neighbor,
You'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.
Fifteen miles was about a day's journey on the Erie Canal, back when the boats were pulled by mules or horses. As for the movie star, remember Gina Lollobrigida [1927 - ]? The actual words of the song are "Low bridge" (over the canal; people on board had to crouch down as the boat passed under them).
Another song goes "Oh the Er-i-e was a-rising, / And the gin was a-getting low, / And I scarcely think / We'll get a drink, / 'Til we get to Buffalo-o-o, / 'Til we get to Buffalo." Buffalo, NY, is at the western end of the Erie Canal.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 7/8/2010
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Also made geology a serious science, and is the reason the UK was the source of s many of the early geologists. Seeing canals dug gave them a cross-section of stratigraphy across the country where before you only had cliffs, mostly round the coast. Canals were one of the keys to the industrial revolution in Britain. They were great when you wanted to get coal and iron ore around, and pottery out (a very smooth ride for all that china) but modern barges and ships are a whole different thing!  But you've got to work with the geology, not against it.  And think about the consequences very carefully.
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