The Null Device

2007/4/19

The Russians are once again talking about building a tunnel under the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. Apparently the US and Canada are on board, and the project is expected $65 billion, with the tunnel itself costing $10 to $12 billion; much of the rest will be spent on providing a rail link across inhospitable terrain to the heretofore unconnected northeastern frontier of Russia.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.
The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System and pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according to a press release which was handed out at the media briefing and bore the companies' logos.
Russian Railways is working on the rail route from Pravaya Lena, south of Yakutsk in the Sakha republic, to Uelen on the Bering Strait, a 3,500 kilometer stretch. The link could carry commodities from eastern Siberia and Sakha to North American export markets, said Artur Alexeyev, Sakha's vice president.
I hope they run passenger trains through the tunnel when it's built. Being able to travel by train from, say, London to New York, taking the long way around, would be interesting.

(via /.) alaska bering strait engineering geography railway russia tunnel 0