Food, lodging, and gas prices would be likely to be crazy high in areas that were uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited before the road was built. Everything would have to be brought in from far away, including the workers. AIUI, oil companies convince people to work in places far from civilization by paying them higher wages. The traveler accommodations in remote locations along these roads would probably have to do something similar- people aren’t exactly clamoring to live in Siberia. There will probably not be much competition for the hotels, restaurants, shops, and gas stations in the middle of nowhere. All that is likely to mean high prices.
It’s worse if it’s a bridge (or tunnel) crossing an ocean, because there is limited space for any competition. At least in Siberia, there is land that you could use to start a competing business, if you could get the employees and supply chain you need to make it work.
A bridge or tunnel crossing the Atlantic, no matter what route it takes, is going to have to deal somehow with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. That means the possibility of earthquakes or volcanoes, as well as the road needing to get about 2.5 cm longer each year- not much, but it adds up. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is also, well, in the middle of the Atlantic. That’s going to complicate things when the bridge or tunnel needs repairs due to spreading, volcanoes, or earthquakes- they’re probably not all going to happen in a nice convenient place close to shore.
I did a round trip drive from southern CA to northern WA this past summer; we went through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, parts of Montana, & (on the return trip) Oregon. Each leg of the trip was ~30 hours of driving time, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more miserable. When I wasn’t driving, I was sleeping, and when I was sleeping, my entire body was sore as Hell from sitting in the cramped-ass car for so long. Not fun or adventurous AT ALL.
Yeah, I think I’ll pass on the epic New York to London fantasy bridge.
So was I. The trip proposed in the OP would have you staring in London, taking the Chunnel (presumably), traversing Europe and Russia, taking the unicorn bridge to Alaska, then driving across Canada and the US to New York. Others in the thread are talking about another more fanciful bridge directly from the US to the UK via the Atlantic, but that’s even less likely than this Russian plan.
(Yeah, I’ve seen stuff like that before. Ever driven in Italy or India? It’s an experience. I’d be more worried about a lack of infrastructure and support systems for something like this, as I have serious doubts that even if the Russians made this they could really support a lot of tourists taking this route)
A thread like this has to mention the 1908-1909 road race 'round the world. They were supposed to cross the Bering Strait on sea ice, but got re-routed by ship to Japan.
Never driven in India or Italy - the worst driving I ever did was in rural Mexico.
The worst parts - unmarked and random speed-bumps on the roads; hair-raising mountain roads with no shoulder; drivers for whom rules are mere suggestions; vehicles seemingly held together by Catholic prayers and chewing-gum.
The nearest highway to the Bering Strait on the Russian side is the Kolyma Highway, around 1200 miles away. It was built by gulag labor in the Stalinist era. Parts of it are a gravel road, rather than a paved road. The Russians want to extend this road to Anadyr on the Pacific coast. They estimate this will take 30 years (they started in 2011). Anadyr is not on the Bering Strait, presumably further road construction to get to the Bering Strait would be needed. I wouldn’t expect to be driving over a Bering Strait bridge and through Russia anytime soon.
Good point. Various EU treaties, I believe, make driving around most of Europe pretty painless from a legal perspective. You might face some practical problems driving around Austria if you only speak Portuguese and a little Spanish, but by golly your Portuguese driver’s license, tags, and insurance should all be ok for the trip.
People in the US generally only drive internationally to Canada and Mexico, so that’s only two countries to deal with, and Canada’s rules are close enough to ours that there isn’t much of a practical problem. If anything, you might just need to buy a slightly beefier insurance package.
How could you design a trans-oceanic highway to minimize the number of borders that would need to be crossed? E.g. for a trans-Atlantic route, you could figure Canada->Greenland->Iceland->UK. Going the other way, you could try an Alaska->Russia-Finland route, which dumps you straight into the Schengen area.
The Russian border patrol might have something to say about this, if someone did manage to do it. The coast on the Bering Strait on the Russian side is a closed military zone. Having a visa to enter Russia in general might not be sufficient for coming in via the Bering Strait- they have detained and expelled people who had visas.
Because, Alaska and Siberia are not at all geologically active?
If you were to leg the Atlantic bridge, it would be about 230 miles from Baffin Island to western Greenland, 190 miles from eastern Greenland to Iceland, 270 from Iceland to the Faroes and 200 from the Faroes to the Outer Hebrides (the Shetlands are slightly closer, but then you have to build another leg. Of course, you would then have to build routes to the bridge endpoints – crossing 700 miles of Greenland would be no mean feat – but at least the mid-Atlantic ridge runs through Iceland, so the bridge would be unaffected by that.
Still, if you can build a usable 270-mile-long bridge, you might as well go whole-hog and build a single practical span 5 times as long. Floating, of course, so that tectonic spread would not affect it much.
OK, the area immediately surrounding the Bering Strait might not be, but there are quite geologically active areas in Alaska and on the Pacific coast of Siberia.
Pennsylvania at least has trees & forests & things. A lot of Siberia is just miles & miles of flat tundra. Not a lot of adventure to be had. Building on permafrost is problematic too. When I traveled a bit around Siberia, I’d frequently see collapsed buildings. They were built on what they call “lenses.” Those are underground ice pockets that melt after you drive supports into them. With climate change, I imagine building will be even more problematic. The roads would require all kinds of constant maintenance.
I think the construction season is a bit longer here in Pennsylvania than it is in many parts of Siberia, too. I don’t think you can really build or maintain roads in Siberia in the winter. They don’t do much non-emergency work on the roads around here in the winter, and from what I’ve heard Siberian winters are worse.
There is also a denser population in Pennsylvania. That’s going to make it much easier to get construction workers and workers in restaurants, hotels, and the like. Pennsylvania has an area of 46,000 square miles, and a population of 12.7 million. Siberia has an area of 5.1 million square miles and a population of 25.6 million. They’ve got more than 100 times the area but only twice the population of Pennsylvania. When Stalin wanted to build roads in Siberia, he solved that problem by sending people to gulags and forcing them to work on construction projects in Siberia. I don’t think they do that any more in Russia, if they do it’s certainly not on the kind of scale that Stalin did.
No. If I were flying to London tomorrow, I would dread the 2-hour drive to the nearest airport. No way I’m driving hours and hours and hours and hours, with nothing to look at but the North Atlantic.
Winter makes it possible to build winter roads, for once the water is frozen, you don’t have to worry about muskeg, wetlands, bodies of water and rivers that limit where roads can be built.
If you want to try travelling on a winter road, come visit northern Ontario, Canada, where we have nearly a couple of thousand miles of winter roads connecting remote communities that otherwise have no land connection to the rest of the world Be sure to use a durable truck, be self-contained for winter survival at -40, carry a SPOT and have a rescue plan, go slowly to avoid a bow wave under the ice, check to see if driving over lakes and rivers voids your insurance, and get permission from the communities that you intend to visit (although folks seldom make such requests, it is a respectful thing to do, for you will be entering into their reservations where they have the right to decide who can or cannot visit).
The trip proposed in the OP would have you staring in London, taking the Chunnel (presumably), traversing Europe and Russia, taking the unicorn bridge to Alaska, then driving across Canada and the US to New York. Others in the thread are talking about another more fanciful bridge directly from the US to the UK via the Atlantic, but that’s even less likely than this Russian plan.
