Bering Straight Tunnel connects nowhere to nowhere |   |
A little bird tells me that the Russkies are planning to build an undersea tunnel to the United States. No doubt this is some sort of paleo-commie plot. But it is an interesting, and hugely expensive one. The scheme is to build from the Easternmost tip of Siberia, to the little islands about halfway between there and Alaska, and then back into the water and over to Alaska. At over $10 billion, it will even cost more than Boston’s big dig. The tunnel, which in its longest stretch will be underwater more than twice the distance of the chunnel, would carry rail, power, pipelines and road traffic. As cool as this is, theoretically, I can’t really imagine that it would be terribly profitable, or useful. As a way to improve transportation to resource rich and largely empty Siberia, I would think that other schemes might give more payback. Saying you’re connecting two continents that have been separated for 10,000 years sounds nifty. But what you’re really doing is connecting the most desolate and uninhabited part of Russia with the most desolate and isolated part of the United States. If they build it, cool, but there isn’t a lot of traffic piling up there, and sea transport is cheaper than rail anyway.
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