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History The concept of an overland connection crossing the Bering Strait goes back at least a 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, put forward the first proposal for a Bering Strait railroad bridge in his senior thesis, said to have been massive but ludicrous. Strauss was, however, the chief designer of the Golden Gate Bridge . Interest was renewed in 1943 (but no serious proposals) with the completion of the Alaska Highway linking the remote territory of Alaska with the Continental United States . Ambitious Alaskans envisioned the highway continuing to link with Nome near the Bering Strait. In 1968 engineer T. Y. Lin made a feasibility study of a Bering Strait bridge and estimated a cost more than $4 billion. Like Gilpin, Lin envisioned the project as more than simply a bridge but as a symbol of international cooperation and unity. Lin also proposed, among other bridges, a second massive connection spanning the Strait Of Gibraltar . During the Cold War , however, the concept met mostly with cool reception. Lin died in 2003. Several others have advocated a Bering Strait bridge including Russian railway engineer Anatoly Cherkasov soon after the end of the Cold War, and Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon as part of a proposed Global Highway and rail system. Challenges Technical difficulties would be enormous, and there would be heavy opposition from environmentalists. Technical challenges The route would lie just south of the Arctic Circle , subject to long, dark winters and extreme weather (average winter lows -20°C with possible lows approaching -50°C. Winter maintenance would be difficult and closures frequent. Ice breakup after each winter is violent and would tear up normal bridge piers; specially shaped and truly massive piers along the ocean floor would be necessary to keep this bridge stable. Maintenance would be staggering. Furthermore, the bridge would require thousands of kilometers of new road and/or track over extremely harsh terrain through the wilderness of Alaska and Siberia. The nearest railhead is Fairbanks , Alaska on the east. As for the west, Russia is in the process of completing a rail connection from the Baikal Amur Mainline to Yakutsk . More, special trains would have to be built to run on both American Standard Gauge (4 feet, 8.5 inches wide) rails and Russian Broad Gauge (5 feet wide) ones. A Dual-gauge track network has been proposed, as those are used in some areas of Australia , whose rail network is split into different gauges. New technologies may be expected to overcome this problem. Environmental opposition There is steep interest both within Alaska and elsewhere in the US and Canada, as well as worldwide, to preserve as much as possible the near pristine conditions of the Alaskan wilderness — and similar consideration for Siberia. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was widely feared to interrupt caribou migration routes, and while it is claimed that some of those fears have been overstated, the question of oil and natural gas drilling on the Alaska North Slope is still hotly controversial. A modern highway and rail route over northern terrain may be less likely to be an issue as the pipeline, but overland transportation currently does not extend from Fairbanks to Nome and the Cape Prince of Wales, nor from Magadan to Cape Dezhnev. Moreover, not only would the requisite construction of vast tracks of overland rail and/or highway raise environmental considerations, but the bridge itself would cross a major whale migration route. Economic justification There are of course doubts whether this project is economically reasonable. Comparing with the price per km of other long bridges, the cost for a road bridge could be estimated to be 15-25 billion dollars. (Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering estimates the cost at 105 billion, for a highway, double track rail and pipelines, including continuations on land). A much cheaper option would be a car Ferry , which could be an intermediate solution. The area is very sparsely populated. There is today (2006) no ferry across the Bering strait. There is not even a road on either side connecting the strait to other parts of the countries. Air is the main mode of travel in these roadless areas. There is however not even a regular air connection across the strait, just few summer charter flights. International bridges and tunnels have in Europe been paid by loans and road fees only, since there is a political principle that international travel should not be paid by tax payers. A road or rail fee could not pay for more than a small share of the costs. External links |