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. In principle, the bridge or tunnel would provide an overland connection linking Asia with North America, although there is little infrastructure in the nearby parts of Alaska and Russia.
Since the two Diomede Islands are between the peninsulas, the Bering Strait could be spanned by three bridges. Two long bridges, each almost 40 kilometres (25 mi) long, would connect the mainland on each side to one island, and a third much shorter one between the two islands, giving a total distance of about 80 kilometres (50 mi). Such length is not unprecedented as the two long bridges would each be shorter than the 41.58-kilometre (25.84 mi) Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, currently the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, though the construction of a Bering Strait crossing would face exceptional engineering, political, and financial challenges.
There have been several proposals made by various persons, TV-channels, magazines, etc. The names used for such bridges have included The Intercontinental Peace Bridge and Eurasia-America Transport Link.[1] 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.[2] On 22 August 2011, the Daily Mail reported that the Russian government had approved a £60bn tunnel across the Bering Strait.[3][4] The £60bn comes from a rough Russian estimate of $100bn.[5]
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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 via 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.[6] The project was presented to the government of the Russian Empire, but it was rejected.[7]
A syndicate of American railroad magnates proposed in 1904 (via a French spokesman) a Siberian-Alaskan railroad from Cape Prince 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 (13 km) each side of the right-of-way. It was debated by officials and finally turned down on March 20, 1907.[8]
Czar Nicholas II approved a tunnel (possibly the American proposal above) in 1905.[9] Its cost was estimated at $65 million[10] and $300 million including all the railroads.[9]
These hopes were dashed with the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution.[11]
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 rail-head at Irkutsk, using an alternative sea and air ferry service across the Bering Strait.[12]
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".[13] Ten years later he organized the Inter-Continental Peace Bridge Inc, a non-profit institution organized to further this proposal.[13] 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 (80 km) span.[14] 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.[15]
In September 2005 when launching the Universal Peace Federation, Sun Myung Moon brought new light to the idea of building what Moon calls 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.[16] The winner (announced June 11, 2009),[17] 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.
The depth of the water offers little challenge, as the strait is no deeper than 180 ft (55 m).[15] The tides and currents in the area are not severe.[13] However, the route would lie just south of the Arctic Circle, subject to long dark winters and extreme weather (average winter lows −20 °C (−4 °F) with possible lows approaching −50 °C (−58 °F)), and so building activity will likely be restricted to five months of the year.[15] The weather also poses challenges to exposed steel.[15] In Lin's design, concrete covers all structures, to simplify maintenance and to offer additional stiffening.[15] Also, while there are no icebergs in the Bering strait, ice floes up to 6 ft (2 m) thick are in constant motion during certain seasons, which could produce forces in the order of 5,000 short tons-force (44,000 kN; 10,000,000 lbf) on a pier.[13]
In 1994, Lin estimated the cost of a bridge to be "a few billion" dollars.[15] The roads and railways on each side were estimated to cost $50 billion.[15] Lin contrasted this cost to petroleum resources "worth trillions".[15] 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 (31 mi) Channel Tunnel.[18]
This excludes the cost of new roads and railways to reach the bridge. Aside from the obvious technical challenges of building two 40-kilometre (25 mi) bridges or a more than 80-kilometre (50 mi) 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 any highways for almost 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) and no railroads or paved highways for over 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi) in any direction from the strait.[19]
On the American side, at least 800 kilometres (500 mi) of highways or railways would have to be constructed in order to connect to the American transport network. A project to connect Nome (just 100 miles (160 km) 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 ($2.3 to $2.7 billion, or approximately $5 million per mile) has so far prevented construction.[20]
The TKM-World Link (Russian: ТрансКонтинентальная магистраль, English: Transcontinental Railway) also called ICL-World Link (Intercontinental link) is a planned link between Siberia and Alaska providing oil, natural gas, electricity, and railroad passengers to the United States from Russia. The plan includes provisions to build a 103-kilometre (64 mi) road and electrified high-speed rail tunnel under the Bering Strait which, if completed, would become the longest tunnel in the world.[21] 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.[22]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved a 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 (60 mi) tunnel would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska.
A cost estimate was US$66 billion.[23] The plan involves creating a 6,000-kilometre (3,700 mi) route through Siberia to facilitate economic ties to the US. A pipeline would be created to transport natural gas and oil from Siberia.[24]
As of 2011, the railway Amur Yakutsk Mainline connecting Yakutsk (2,800 km or 1,700 mi from the strait) with the main rail network is under active construction; the estimated completion date is 2013.
In late August, 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.[22] It would be a faster, safer, and cheaper way to move freight around the world than container ships, supporters of the idea believed.[22] They estimated it could carry about 3% of global freight and make about US$7 billion a year.[22] Shortly after, the Russian government approved the construction of the US$65 billion Siberia-Alaska rail and tunnel across the Bering Strait.[25]
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