I have a friend who is studying in South Africa for a year. I would really like to visit him, as I doubt I will ever have a good excuse to get to that corner of the world again.
Airline tickets, however, are way out of my price range. I think the world would be much better if we found a way to bridge the Bering Straight. I could just hop in my car and do an overland world tour! Think of all the tourism we could bring to Siberia!
IANAEngineer, but I think it would be next to impossible to build a stable bridge that long, especially in an area with seismic activity. Perhaps there are islands in the area that would make for a series of bridges or tunnels? Other more outlandish ideas I came up with involved blowing up chunks of the moon and genetically engineered coral. I leave it to the teeming millions, who have solved such engineering feats as how to create a goat cannon, to figure out how to bridge the Pacific.
So how about it? Does anyone have any somewhat plausible way of bringing back the land bridge?
Pah. Simplicity itself. We simply detonate enough nukes to create an ice-age inducing dust cloud, then drive across on the glaciers. If you’re in a hurry, the land bridge should be exposed before the glaciers get into position, but you still have that nasty drive up to Alaska to cope with (unless you live there already).
What’s that? You’re concerned that that will kill everyone? Well, I guess I don’t have a solution for you after all.
You’re not the only one to come up with this idea, although a highway bridge probably is a unique approach. Most of the ideas so far have involved a rail connection and envision a tunnel instead of a weather and ice vulnerable bridge.
Ironically, it seems the bigger problem is not the tunnel but that Alaska is not connected to the rest of North America by rail and a few thousand miles of rail would have to be laid to connect it. That’s right, in 2001 after 180+/- years of railroading there’s still no rail line that links Alaska into the general Canadian rail network and on into the U.S… There’s a railway IN Alaska, but everything comes in and out by ship or plane.
Y’know, those of us who live near relatively narrow stretches of water have encountered this amazing feat of engineering: The ferry.
The only thing currently preventing the application of this technological breakthrough to the Bering Strait is a rather serious lack of profit to be made by the operators of said transport.
You want to go to South Africa by way of the Bering Strait? That’s what, a 10-14,000 mile drive? One way?
That’s a hell of a road trip! And you pass through a lot of places where the nearest Motel 6 is a yurt.
I would also imagine that there’s very little economic incentive for allowing people to get from Alaska to Siberia. I’m pretty sure that it’s possible to bridge or tunnel across the strait, but the toll would be like $100,000 per crossing just to recoup the costs from the small number of people who manage to drive out there.
And if an airline ticket is out of your price range, you won’t be able to pay for the gas either, not to mention the accomodation and living expenses for the trip. Airlines are not very expensive compared to other means of transport. In Europe and Japan, the price for rail and air travel are comparable. (But so is the travel time)
Alaska Airlines briefly ran an Anchorage-Nome-Khabarovsk route in the mid-90’s, making it possible to get to Europe the other way around, but there was never enough business to make the route remotely profitable. Add the huge cost of a fixed crossing, and the competitive disadvantage of the drive across vast uninhabited distances, and there’s no way this’ll ever be seriously considered.
I heard on a not-too-long-ago radio broadcast that there is a serious proposal on the table to connect the Old and New Worlds by rail. Three biggest problems: (1) the nearest railhead* to the Bering Strait on this side (North America) is Fort Nelson, B.C., at least 2000 km from the Strait; (2) on the other side, it’s Neryungri, in eastern Siberia; (3) the Strait is 55 miles wide, and the climate is decidedly unfriendly. So we’re talking about 5,000 miles of new track and the mother of all bridges/tunnels. That’s a lot of seal pelts.
Finagle: Let’s say LA to Cape Town, via Nome. That should set your odometer forward at least 30,000 miles. One way. Bring plenty of oil and spare parts.
The Alaska Railway doesn’t count; it should connect to the North American rail system.
“…the small number of people who manage to drive out there.”
“That’s a hell of a road trip! And you pass through a lot of places where the nearest Motel 6 is a yurt.”
“the competitive disadvantage of the drive across vast uninhabited distances,”
Umm, the concept is to provide a direct rail link between the Americas and Eurasia so that FREIGHT can travel by train without having to cross the ocean by ship. The primary market is NOT the individual traveler driving up to Alaska or Siberia and putting his or her car on a shuttle train like they use on the Chunnel, or even through passenger trains (with the possible exception of high-price tour trains going through the tunnel for the sake of going through the tunnel). And it’s NOT the underpopulated Alaska-Siberia market that is intended to be tapped, it’s a broader Eurasia-North America market.
Even with containers and all the automation they make possible, it costs a lot to load a ship in Asia, cross the Pacific, and unload on the West Coast. Hell, as a general rule ANY change of transport mode tends to add cost. The contention is that if you could load a container onto a train in Hamburg, say, and leave it on that flatcar until it reaches, say, Chicago, the cost would be notably less than a trip involving a train from Hamburg to a Russian Pacific port, an ocean crossing to a West Coast port, and a train to Chicago.
Look, there’s not even a road connection from Fairbanks and Anchorage to Nome for crying out loud. Most of Alaska is inaccesable by road. I know it’s hard to imagine for you city folks, but there are towns and villages in Alaska that can only be reached by water and air. That’s right, you can’t drive there! Now calm down, please! Stop hyperventilating. I know it’s scary.
Technologically, putting a road or rail bridge or tunnel across the Bering Straits is no big deal. It’s very shallow. Yes, you’d have to worry about ice and snow, but it would be doable. It would be expensive, but well within the range of many other engineering feats. The trouble is, there’s no economic or political reason to do it. All you’d do is connect Alaska to Siberia. Alaska is remote and out of the way. Siberia is remote and out of the way. A Bering Straits bridge makes a little more sense than a bridge from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica, but not much more.
Most of the ideas so far have involved a rail connection and envision a tunnel instead of a weather and ice vulnerable bridge.