When I first heard of the idea several months ago, I thought it was a big scheme likely to go nowhere due to the extreme magnitude of the project. However, judging by this Bloomberg article, it’s apparently got some legs.
The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, told reporters in Moscow today. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he said.
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.
“This will be a business project, not a political one,” Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of Russia’s agency for special economic zones, said at the media briefing. Russian officials will formally present the plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments next week, Razbegin said.
Apparently, the current price tag for the project would be about $65 billion, with most of the expense going to build the thousands of miles of access railway in Siberia, Alaska, the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta. The plan also includes provisions for a intercontinental gas pipeline, fiber optic telecom wires, and electricity. Apparently the payback period on the project is 20 years.
I can’t imagine how the project will get through the environmental hurdles that will certainly be erected in the U.S. and Canada, given that the rail corridor would have to cross an awful lot of sub-arctic wilderness.
Other thoughts that come to mind:
- Wouldn’t it be terribly inefficient to transport electricity over that long of a distance, given current technology?
- If the project happens, and this rail link becomes a viable way to transport material Eurasia and North America, is our rail infrastructure capable of handling the increased demand that would almost certainly arise?
- Perhaps someday in a couple of decades it will be possible to determine which really is worse - rail passenger service in Russia, or rail passenger service in the United States.