A Bering Strait crossing is a hypothetical bridge or tunnel spanning
the relatively narrow and shallow Bering Strait between the Chukotka Peninsula in
Russia and the Seward Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska. The bridge or
tunnel would provide a connection linking North America with Asia and
Europe. With the two Diomede Islands between the
peninsulas, the Bering Strait could be spanned by three bridges. Two long
bridges, each almost 40 kilometres long, would connect the mainland on each side
to one island, and a third much shorter one between the two islands. However,
the construction of a Bering Strait crossing would face exceptional
political, engineering, and financial hurdles.
There have been several proposals for a Bering Strait crossing made by various
persons, television channels, magazines, etc. The names used for them include The
Intercontinental Peace Bridge and Eurasia-America Transport Link. Tunnel
names have included "TKM-World Link" and "AmerAsian Peace Tunnel". In April 2007,
Russian government officials told the press that the Russian government will
back a $65 billion plan by a consortium of companies to build a Bering Strait
tunnel. In August 2011, the Daily Mail reported that the Russian government had
approved a £60 billion tunnel across the Bering Strait. The £60 billion comes
from a rough Russian estimate of $100 billion.
History The concept of an overland connection
crossing the Bering Strait goes back before the 20th century. William Gilpin,
first governor of the Colorado Territory, envisioned a vast
"Cosmopolitan Railway" in 1890 linking the entire world through a series of
railways. Two years later, Joseph Strauss, who
went on to design over 400 bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, put
forward the first proposal for a Bering Strait railroad bridge in his senior
thesis. The project was presented to the government of the Russian Empire, but it
was rejected. A syndicate of American railroad
magnates proposed in 1904 a Siberian-Alaskan railroad from Cape
Prince of Wales in Alaska through a tunnel under the Bering Strait and
across northeastern Siberia to Irkutsk via Cape Deshnev, Verkhnekolymsk and
Yakutsk. The proposal was for a 90-year lease, and exclusive mineral rights for
8 miles each side of the right-of-way. It was debated by officials and finally
turned down on March 20, 1907. Czar Nicholas II approved a tunnel in
1905. Its cost was estimated at $65 million and $300 million including all
the railroads. These hopes were dashed with the
outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution.
Interest was renewed during World War II with the completion in 1942-43 of the
Alaska Highway linking the remote territory of Alaska with Canada and the
continental United States. In 1942 the Foreign Policy Association envisioned
the highway continuing to link with Nome near the Bering Strait, linked by
motorway to the railhead at Irkutsk, using an alternative sea and air ferry
service across the Bering Strait. In 1958 engineer T. Y. Lin suggested the
construction of a bridge across the Bering Strait "to foster commerce and
understanding between the people of the United States and the Soviet Union". Ten
years later he organized the Inter-Continental Peace Bridge Inc, a
non-profit institution organized to further this proposal. At that time he
made a feasibility study of a Bering Strait bridge and estimated the cost to
be $1 billion for the 50-mile span. In 1994 he updated the cost to more than $4
billion. Like Gilpin, Lin envisioned the project as a symbol of international
cooperation and unity, and dubbed the project the Intercontinental Peace
Bridge. In September 2005 when launching the
Universal Peace Federation, Sun Myung Moon brought new light to the idea of
building what Moon called the "Bering Strait Peace King bridge and tunnel",
calling all the world's governments to make a joint effort to realize world
peace. On February 10, 2009, Sun Myung Moon's "Foundation for Peace and
Unification" announced a competition for the design of a bridge across the Strait
via the Diomede Islands. The winner, was a project entitled "Diomede
Archipelago". It proposes a series of artificial islands that form two
archipelagos extending the two continents, and three tunnels connecting
the two Diomede islands and the archipelagos.
According to a report in the Beijing Times in May 2014, Chinese
transportation experts are proposing building a roughly 10,000 kilometre-long
high-speed rail line from Manchuria to the United States. The project would
include a tunnel under the Bering Strait and connect to the contiguous United
States via Canada. Technical challenges
The depth of the water offers little challenge, because the strait is no
deeper than 55 metres. The tides and currents in the area are not severe.
Nevertheless, the route would be located just south of the Arctic Circle. Because
the location experiences long, dark winters and extreme weather, including
average winter lows of −20 °C and possible lows approaching −50 °C,
construction activity would likely be restricted to five months of the year.
The weather also poses challenges to exposed steel. In Lin's design, concrete
covers all structures, to simplify maintenance and to offer additional
stiffening. Although there are no icebergs in the
Bering Strait, ice floes up to 1.8 metres thick are in constant motion
during certain seasons, which could produce forces on the order of 44,000
kilonewtons on a pier. Economic costs
In 1994, Lin estimated the cost of a bridge to be "a few billion" dollars.
The roads and railways on each side were estimated to cost $50 billion. Lin
contrasted this cost to petroleum resources "worth trillions". Discovery
Channel's Extreme Engineering estimates the cost of a highway, electrified
double-track high-speed rail and pipelines, at $105 billion, five times
the cost of the 50-kilometre Channel Tunnel.
This excludes the cost of new roads and railways to reach the bridge. Aside from
the obvious technical challenges of building two 40-kilometre bridges or a
more than 80-kilometre tunnel across the strait, another major challenge is that,
as of 2011, there is nothing on either side of the Bering Strait to connect the
bridge to. The Russian side, in particular, is
severely lacking in infrastructure, without highways for almost 2,000
kilometres and no railroads or paved highways for over 3,200 kilometres in
any direction from the strait. On the American side, at least 800
kilometres of highways or railways would have to be built to connect to the
American transport network. A project to connect Nome from the strait) to the
rest of the continent by a paved highway has been proposed by the Alaskan state
government, although the very high cost has so far prevented construction.
The TKM-World Link The TKM-World Link also called ICL-World
Link is a planned 6,000-kilometer link between Siberia and Alaska providing
oil, natural gas, electricity, and railroad passengers to the United States
from Russia. Proposed in 2007, the plan includes provisions to build a
103-kilometre tunnel under the Bering Strait which, if completed, would become
the longest tunnel in the world. The tunnel would be part of a railway
joining Yakutsk, the capital of the Russian Yakutia republic, and
Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the Russian Far East, with the western coast of Alaska.
The Bering Strait tunnel was estimated to cost between $10 billion to $12
billion, while the entire project was estimated to cost $65 billion.
In 2008, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved the plan to build a
railroad to the Bering Strait area, as a part of the development plan to run
until 2030. The more than 100-kilometre tunnel would run under the Bering Strait
between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska. The cost estimate was
US$66 billion. As of 2013, the railway Amur Yakutsk
Mainline connecting Yakutsk with the main rail network is completed. However,
this railway is meant for freight and is too curvy for high-speed passenger
trains. In late August 2011, at a conference in
Yakutsk in eastern Russia, the plan was backed by some of President Dmitry
Medvedev's top officials, including Aleksandr Levinthal, the deputy federal
representative for the Russian Far East. It would be a faster, safer, and cheaper
way to move freight around the world than container ships, supporters of the
idea believed. They estimated it could carry about 3% of global freight and
make about US$7 billion a year. Shortly after, the Russian government approved
the construction of the US$65 billion Siberia-Alaska rail and tunnel across
the Bering Strait. Other observers doubt that this will be
cheaper than container ships, having in mind that the cost for transport from
China to Europe by railroad is higher than by container ship, even though the
ships have to make a large detour past Singapore.
"China–Russia–Canada–America" railway In 2014, reports emerged that China is
considering construction of a "China–Russia–Canada–America" 600 km/h
bullet train railroad that would include a 200 km-long undersea tunnel crossing
the Bering Strait. The train would reportedly travel at around 350
kilometres per hour, allowing passengers to travel between the United States and
China in about two days. Although the press remain skeptical of
the project, China's state-run China Daily claims that China possesses the
necessary technology, which will be used to construct an underwater tunnel
connecting China's Fujian province with Taiwan. It is unknown who is expected to
pay for the construction, and how many passengers would prefer a three-day
train trip to a 12-hour direct flight. Trans-Eurasian Belt Development
In 2015 it was reported another possible collaboration between China and Russia
that will be part of the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development; a transportation
corridor across Siberia that would also include a road bridge with gas and oil
pipelines between the easternmost point of Siberia and the westernmost point of
Alaska. China's Silk Road Economic Belt
Initiative has similar plans so the project would work in parallel for both
countries. See also
References Further reading
"The Bering Strait Crossing" by James A. Oliver out now in paperback ISBN
0-9546995-6-4". Information Architects. "Russians dream of tunnel to Alaska.".
BBC News. 2001-01-03. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
"Russia Considering Tunnel Between Asia and North America". VOA. 2007-04-19.
Archived from the original on 2007-05-14. Retrieved 2007-04-19.
"Thinking Big: Roads and Railroads to Siberia". Alaska Historical Society.
Archived from the original on 2006-01-10. Retrieved 2009-10-11.
http:www.amazon.comdp/0955663806 ICL World Link: Intercontinental
Eurasia-America Transport Corridor Via the Bering Strait by James A. Oliver,
Andrey Podderegin, Dmitiri Mashin External links
Kremlin paves way for East to West rail link after 'approving' $99bn Bering
Strait tunnel Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering
World Peace King Tunnel Quadrail Intercontinental Railway and
Bering Strait Tunnel Design Trans-Global Highway
The Bering Strait Crossing Alaska Canada Rail Link - Project
Feasibility Study "Russian Far East Regions Plan for
Railroad to the Bering Strait". The Bridge Over the Bering Strait by
James Cotter A Superhighway Across the Bering Strait,
The Atlantic