Talk:Suez Canal/Archive 2

Canal Crossings
At about 30,2,43 N 32,34,28 E on Google earth (i.e. about midway between the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel and the overline power crossin) I see what looks like a pontoon/swing bridge for road traffic, which seems to have come into existence around 2018-2019. https://www.google.com/maps/@30.04514,32.57599,1557m/data=!3m1!1e3 I don't see mention of this in the article, or anywhere else on the web. Is it temporary? Strange that I don't see mention of this anywhere. 2600:1700:F91:FAA0:90EE:B0F9:5015:8AD3 (talk) 13:54, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * looks like El Nasr Floating Bridge? https://invest-gate.me/news/el-sisi-inaugurates-el-nasr-bridge-port-said/  Mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Project#Floating_bridge Jeff (talk) 15:53, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, no, you're talking about a bridge further south. Jeff (talk) 15:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)


 * It seems there is a new "Ahmed el-Mansy" pontoon bridge opened in 2017, at Ismailia - the pontoon sections can be moved to let ships through. It looks like it's meant to be a long-term fixture rather than a temporary relief for the ferry, but i's hard to be sure. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)


 * After a bit of digging, it looks like there are *five* pontoon bridges, built 2016-19; El Nasr in Port Said, two around Ismailia (Taha Zaki and Ahmed Mansy), one at El Qantara (Abanoub Gerges), and one in Suez governorate in the south (Ahmed Omar Shabrawy). All seem to be a similar design. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:41, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Found them all on Google Maps, north to south:


 * El Nasr (one span - nothing on the eastern channel)
 * Abanoub Gerges (one span)
 * Ahmed el-Mansy (two spans over different channels)
 * Taha Zaki Abdullah (two spans over different channels)
 * Ahmed Omar Shabrawy (one span)

The first three are specifically named on Google Maps, the others are inferred from the announcements. Interestingly, while these photos show a ship traversing through the Ahmed el-Mansy bridge, with the middle section pulled away, the satellite photos show the whole thing pushed against the bank. I guess it can be used either way. The only one that has a different structure is the El Nasr bridge, which seems to be designed to swing the centre pontoons open, and you can see some kind of fixed mooring points to hold them there. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I've now updated the article with a short note about these five. There's a bit of a dearth of English-language material on them, unfortunately, but there is enough to confirm they exist and they're intended to be reasonably permanent crossings. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:40, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

The Wikipedia servers appear to have just had a "brain-fart"

 * At 5:25 UTC, I slightly changed about 5 words, and somehow a monumental edit removing over 2,000 characters occured, and was attributed to me here.


 * Approximately 5 seconds later another edit was done by MusikBot_II.


 * After reverting this strange edit, (along with MisicBot's edit), I redid my intended edit here, which appeared to work as was first intended.

I hope the WP servers are "OK." Silly-boy-three (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Followup:
 * It appears that some admin may be tinkering with this page, but not leaving any "footprints" on the page History.
 * Silly-boy-three (talk) 05:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

The 'New Suez Canal" and the Ballah Bypass - a bit unclear
I just read this very interesting article for the first time (as many people do these days, I assume) and was for the life of me not able to completely figure out what the expansion really is about - at least not from the article alone. After thoroughly studying maps I got the greater picture, but I guess one should be able to find out just from the article. The Suez Canal Area Development Project article is not much help in this regard either, and there are even inconsistencies between the two. My qualms: 1) There is no definition found anywhere what the Ballah Bypass (mentioned three times) precisely is. I guess that's the main problem. A simple 'from A to B' with a clear definition what A and B are on the map would clear up a lot. 2) The Ballah Bypass has presumably be widened on a length of 35 kms, but obviously a second canal has been added to the old one along a stretch, which is referred to as 'side channel' one paragraph later, still without any definition. This comes later in the 'Layout and operation' section, but only as 'the middle part'. 3) Later we read that the Ballah Bypass has been widened from 61 mtrs to 312 mtrs. This presumably is the widening mentioned before, but measuring all stretches of canal on a map shows them to be very roughly 300 mtrs wide along their whole length. So it would be nice to know how wide the canal was in the beginning. Or was the whole canal 61 mtrs wide before the expansion? Or just the Ballah Bypass? 4) The article states that the cost of the project was 'more than E£59.4 billion (US$9bn)', whereas the 'New Suez Canal' article states 'around 30 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately 4.2 billion dollars)'. A little bit of research shows that some media outlets cite from these articles (paraphrasing, but obviously), but all of them stay vague regarding the expansion in the same manner. I hope you understand what I mean - it's a great article, but I'm not sure all the info on the expansion it there in a comprehensible fashion. In part reads like it was written by someone who's familiar with the area and the project and assumes others are as well. I'd do the edits myself, but obviously I lack the knowledge about the project. :-) Matzeachmann (talk) 11:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Blocking and diversion 2021
Initial reports on the containership blocking the canal on March 24th 2021 did mention traffic being divertet to an "old canal". 'The Canal allegedly works on reopening old canals for tempoary use' (danish national news)

To my knowledge there is no "old canal" - the same canal has been deepened and possible straightened. And from 2015 supplemented by a new parallel canal on the central part of the stretch. But I'm open to enlightenment. Poul G (talk) 07:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I think many of the sources are confused about this. They may be thinking about the second canal north of Bitter Lake that was completed in 2015 (which obviously doesn't help in this case). Or maybe the 2000 year old Ptolemy canal. But there is no "old canal" that can be re-opened. GA-RT-22 (talk) 15:18, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

This is possibly a misleading statement: "Shipping companies were also considering whether to divert their ships along...the Cape of Good Hope. The first container ship to do so was Ever Given's sister ship, Ever Greet.[105]" Ever Greet has diverted around the Cape, however this is likely to have been unrelated to avoiding a potential delay and so not indicative of what other ships might have done. The Ever Given has been impounded until liability has been decided. It's likely that Ever Green saw this coming and chose not to risk another of their ships being impounded. The route other Ever Green ships take in the future could settle this. 77.100.127.121 (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Panama canal in economic activities
Explain this 2405:204:A406:9B25:43AB:29E4:7877:6D84 (talk) 12:47, 12 May 2022 (UTC)