Thailand ponders digging Kra Isthmus - again!

[pegman]

Singapore is a logistics hub which takes in containers and reloads them on outbound ships (i.e. a ship containing shipments from India (and others) for China, Taiwan, Japan, Vancouver, Los Angeles, etc.) is then taken off and put back on ships that are laden with shipments for one destination.

As such I am wondering if the same thing could not be accomplished with building a port on one side and one on the other side with strong rail connections over those 50 miles (maybe even automated). I would think that just routing ships through the canal would not challenge Singapore since they would still be going through Singapore for unloading/reloading. The canal will also be very restricted on the number of ships going through at once (much more than the straights - which they say are congested).

Cost prohibitive as opposed to sailing around.

[bkkcanuck8]

Singapore is a logistics hub which takes in containers and reloads them on outbound ships (i.e. a ship containing shipments from India (and others) for China, Taiwan, Japan, Vancouver, Los Angeles, etc.) is then taken off and put back on ships that are laden with shipments for one destination.

As such I am wondering if the same thing could not be accomplished with building a port on one side and one on the other side with strong rail connections over those 50 miles (maybe even automated). I would think that just routing ships through the canal would not challenge Singapore since they would still be going through Singapore for unloading/reloading. The canal will also be very restricted on the number of ships going through at once (much more than the straights - which they say are congested).

Cost prohibitive as opposed to sailing around.

If you have ever flown into Singapore you will see massive port infrastructure and a fleet of ships that are anchored waiting to be processed. I lot of those ships are not "sailing around" they are being processed in a hub that is used in a similar manner to the US airport system (hub and spoke). They are taking off cargo meant for many destinations from one port and consolidating these shipments on ships bound for one or two ports of call on the other side. If you are bypassing Singapore, this job still has to be done somewhere for a lot of this cargo.

If you are building a canal to bypass Singapore for through traffic, you are only shaving a couple of days off this trip only to be queued up waiting to go through one very small queue. It is not the same the Panama canal that was constructed to saving as much as a month off transit from the Atlantic to Pacific (or vice-versa).