Yes, and nobody sees a problem with running the world economy this close to the abyss constantly, not even after someone yanked the joystick the wrong way and wedged his ship in the Nile river, or after the ridiculous Corona-induced "container shortage."
What do you mean by the abyss? Serious question. I don't recall there being critical industries grinding to a halt, people starving, or anything like that from the Suez being blocked.
People see the problem, they have been complaining for decades.
The issues are manifold:
- the Panama Canal has already been built at the shortest site possible, dito for the Suez Canal
- constructing a new canal is (virtually) impossible due to the enormous amounts of rock you'd have to move on the Panama side - there's a reason why the existing canal is raised so much above sea level
- both Egypt and Panama lack the financial resources to construct a new canal or meaningfully expand the existing ones, and public funding from the Rest of World isn't really there either
- the impact to nature is just as massive, which makes that a no-go for environmental reasons - why destroy so much of nature just for even more cheap trinkets from China?
- climate change is looming to kill off polar ice, which would enable ships to use polar transit routes without icebreakers and significantly impede the business of the canals
No redundancy, no buffers, no fallbacks.