Cutting (transportation)

In civil engineering, a cutting or cut is where part of a hill or mountain is cut out to make way for a road or rail line. It is in cut and fill construction used to keep the route straight and/or flat, where the comparative cost or practicality of alternate solutions (such as diversion) is too prohibitive. Contrary to the general meaning of cutting, a cutting in construction is mechanically excavated or blasted out with carefully-placed explosives. The cutting may only be on one side of a slope, or directly through the middle or top of a hill. Generally, a cutting is open at the top (otherwise it is a tunnel). A cutting is (in a sense) the opposite of an embankment.
The word is also used in the same sense in mining, as in open cut mine.