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Bering Strait crossing

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For the land bridge, see Beringia.

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.

Possible route of the bridge across the Bering Strait.

With the two Diomede Islands 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. Such length is not unprecedented, as the two long bridges each would be shorter than the 41.58-kilometre (25.84 mi) Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, currently the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world. 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, TV channels, magazines, etc. The names used for them include 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]

History

 
Map showing the proximity of Chukchi Peninsula in Russia to Seward Peninsula in America

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 hi (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.

Technical challenges

 
Satellite image of Bering Strait. Cape Dezhnev, Russia is on the left, the two Diomede Islands are in the middle, and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska is on the right.

The depth of the water offers little challenge, as the strait is no deeper than 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, be subject to long dark winters and extreme weather (average winter lows -20 °C with possible lows approaching -50 °C), and so building activity will likely be restricted to 5 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 1.8 m thick are in constant motion during certain seasons, which could produce forces in the order of 44 000 kN (4 500 ton-force) on a pier.[13]

Economic costs

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) (the nearest is M56) 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 (part of Alaska Route 2) 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 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 (64 mi) 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] The Bering Strait tunnel was estimated to cost between $10 billion to $12 billion, while the entire project was estimated to cost $65bn.[21]

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 (60 mi) tunnel would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska.[23] The cost estimate was US$66 billion.[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 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.[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]

See also

References

  1. ^ A Transcontinental Eurasia-America Transport Link via the Bering Strait, at the 1st International Conference "Megaprojects of the Russian East"
  2. ^ "Russia wants a rail link to North America," Der Spiegel, April 20, 2007 [1]
  3. ^ Longbottom, Wil (2011-08-22). "London to New York by rail? Russia 'approves' £60bn Bering Strait tunnel". Daily Mail. London.
  4. ^ http://travel.aol.co.uk/2011/08/23/london-to-usa-by-rail-russia-approves-60bn-bering-stait-scheme/
  5. ^ Тоннелю под Беринговым проливом пророчат большой успех
  6. ^ Kevin Starr. Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California, 330. Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-19-510080-8
  7. ^ An excerpt from memoirs of the Russian Empire Minister of Land Forces Aleksandr Rediger Template:Ru icon
  8. ^ Theodore Shabad and Victor L. Mote: Gateway to Siberian Resources (The BAM) pp. 70-71 (Halstead Press/John Wiley, New York, 1977) ISBN 0-470-99040-6
  9. ^ a b "Czar Authorizes American Syndicate to Begin Work". New York Times. August 2, 1906. Retrieved 2009-07-07. The Czar of Russia has issued an order authorizing the American syndicate, represented by Baron Loicq de Lobel, to begin work on the TransSiberian-Alaska ... {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  10. ^ Burr, William H. (January 1907). "Around the World by Rail". Locomotive engineers journal. 41. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers: 108–111.
  11. ^ Halpin, Tony (April 20, 2007). "Russia plans $65bn tunnel to America". London: The Times. Retrieved 2009-11-02.
  12. ^ "AIRWAY TO RUSSIA VIA ALASKA URGED; Foreign Policy Association Also Favors Northern Sea Route and Bering Link". New York Times. July 20, 1942,. p. 3. Retrieved 2009-10-25. {{cite news}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  13. ^ a b c d Troitsky, M. S. (1994). "1.10.4 Bering Strait Bridge Project". Planning and design of bridges (illustrated ed.). John Wiley and Sons. pp. 39–41. ISBN 978-0-471-02853-6.
  14. ^ "Engineer feels Bering Strait Bridge Possible". The Bulletin. April 23, 1969. p. 12. Retrieved 2009-10-11.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Pope, Gregory (April 1994). "Last Great Engineering Challenge: Alaska-Siberia Bridge". Popular Mechanics. 171 (4). Hearst Magazines: 56–58. ISSN 0032-4558.
  16. ^ "International competition - Interconnection & communication in the Bering Strait". International Union of Architects–UIA. 10 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  17. ^ "Interconnection & communication in the Bering Strait". International Union of Architects- UIA. 2 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  18. ^ Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering
  19. ^ "Trip from Russia to USA may take one hour soon". Retrieved 2010-02-23.
  20. ^ COCKERHAM, SEAN (January 27, 2010). "Nome road could cost $2.7 billion". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 7 February 2010.
  21. ^ a b Humber, Yuriy (April 18,2007). "Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska". Bloomberg. Bloomberg. Retrieved 2 October 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ a b c d "Report: Tunnel linking US to Russia gains support". msnbc.com. 20 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
  23. ^ "Russia Green Lights $65 Billion Siberia-Alaska Rail and Tunnel to Bridge the Bering Strait!". 23 August 2011. Retrieved 23 August 2011.
  24. ^ Smith, Nicola; Hutchins, Chris (2008-03-30). "Bridgebuilding Vladimir Putin wants tunnel to US". The Times. London. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
  25. ^ "Russia Green Lights $65 Billion Siberia-Alaska Rail and Tunnel to Bridge the Bering Strait!". 23 August 2011. Retrieved 23 August 2011.

Further reading

65°47′N 169°01′W / 65.783°N 169.017°W / 65.783; -169.017

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