Bering Strait crossing

The concept of an overland connection crossing the Bering Strait goes back before the 20th century. William Gilpin, first governor of the Colorado Territory, envisaged a vast "Cosmopolitan Railway" in 1890 linking the entire world through a series of railways.

Two years later, Joseph Strauss, who went on to design over 400 bridges, and then serve as the project engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, put forward the first proposal for a Bering Strait rail bridge in his senior thesis.[4] The project was presented to the government of the Russian Empire, but it was rejected.[5]

In 1904, a syndicate of American railroad magnates proposed (through a French spokesman) a Siberian–Alaskan railroad from Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska through a tunnel under the Bering Strait and across northeastern Siberia to Irkutsk via Cape Dezhnev, Verkhnekolymsk, and Yakutsk (around 5,000 km (3,100 mi) of railroad to build, plus over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) in North America). The proposal was for a 90-year lease, and exclusive mineral rights for 8 miles (13 km) each side of the right-of-way. It was debated by officials and finally turned down on March 20, 1907.[6]

Czar Nicholas II approved the American proposal in 1905 (only as a permission, not much financing from the Czar).[7] Its cost was estimated at $65 million[8] and $300 million, including all the railroads.[7] These hopes were dashed with the outbreak of the 1905 Russian Revolution followed by World War I.[9]

A Nazi plan to create a wide-gauge railroad called the Breitspurbahn was mooted to connect the cities of Europe, India, China and ultimately North America via the Bering Strait. The railroad was never built.

Interest was renewed during World War II with the completion in 1942–43 of the Alaska Highway, linking the remote territory of Alaska with Canada and the continental United States. In 1942, the Foreign Policy Association envisioned the highway continuing to link with Nome near the Bering Strait, linked by highway to the railhead at Irkutsk, using an alternative sea-and-air ferry service across the Bering Strait.[10] At the same time the road on the Russian side was extended by building the 2000-kilometer (1250 mi) Kolyma Highway.

In 1958, engineer Tung-Yen Lin suggested the construction of a bridge across the Bering Strait "to foster commerce and understanding between the people of the United States and the Soviet Union".[11] Ten years later he organized the Inter-Continental Peace Bridge, Inc., a non-profit institution organized to further this proposal.[11] At that time he made a feasibility study of a Bering Strait bridge and estimated the cost to be $1 billion for the 50-mile (80 km) span.[12] In 1994 he updated the cost to more than $4 billion. Like Gilpin, Lin envisioned the project as a symbol of international cooperation and unity, and dubbed the project the Intercontinental Peace Bridge.[13]

According to a report in the Beijing Times in May 2014, Chinese transport experts had proposed building a roughly 10,000-kilometer (6,200 mi) high-speed rail line from northeast China to the United States.[14] The project would include a tunnel under the Bering Strait and connect to the contiguous United States via Wales, Alaska, along the river to Fairbanks, Alaska, and along the Alaska Highway to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Several American entrepreneurs have also advanced private-sector proposals, such as an Alaska-based limited-liability company InterBering founded in 2010 to lobby for a cross-straits connection, and a 2018 cryptocurrency offering to fund the construction of a tunnel.[15][16][17] In 2005, investor Neil Bush, younger brother of US President George W. Bush and son of President George H. W. Bush, traveled abroad with Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church as he promoted a proposal to dig a transportation corridor beneath the Bering Strait. When questioned by Mother Jones during the Republican primary campaign of his brother Jeb Bush a decade later in 2015, he denied having supported the tunnel project and said that he had traveled with Moon because he supported "efforts by faith leaders to call their flock into service to others."[18]

The straight distance between Russia and Alaska is 82.5 kilometres (51.3 mi). If building bridges and using the Diomede Islands, the straight distance over water for the three parts would be 36.0 kilometres (22.4 mi), 3.8 kilometres (2.4 mi) and 36.8 kilometres (22.9 mi), in total 76.6 kilometres (47.6 mi).[22]

The depth of the water is a minor problem, as the strait is no deeper than 55 meters (180 ft),[13] comparable to the English Channel. The tides and currents in the area are not severe.[11]

The route is just south of the Arctic Circle, and the location has long, dark winters and extreme weather, including average winter lows of −20 °C (−4 °F) and temperatures approaching −50 °C (−58 °F) in cold snaps. This would mean that construction work would likely be restricted to five months of the year, around May to September, and centered during summer.[13]

The weather also poses challenges to exposed steel.[13] In Lin's design, concrete covers all structures, to simplify maintenance and to offer additional stiffening.[13]

Although there are no icebergs in the Bering Strait, ice floes up to 1.8 meters (6 ft) thick are in constant motion during certain seasons, which could produce forces on the order of 44 meganewtons (9,900,000 pounds-force; 4,500 tonnes-force) on a pier.[11]

Roads on either side of the strait would likely have to cross tundra, requiring either an unpaved road or some way to avoid the effects of permafrost.

If the crossing is chosen as a bridge, it would probably connect Wales, Alaska, to a location south of Uelen. The bridge would also likely be divided by the Diomede Islands, which are at the middle of the Bering Strait.

In 1994, Lin estimated the cost of a bridge to be "a few billion" dollars.[13] The roads and railways on each side were estimated to cost $50 billion.[13] Lin contrasted this cost to petroleum resources "worth trillions".[13] Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering estimates the cost of a highway, electrified double-track high-speed rail, and pipelines at $105 billion (in 2007 US dollars), five times the original cost of the 1994 50-kilometer (31 mi) Channel Tunnel.[23]

This excludes the cost of new roads and railways to reach the bridge. Aside from the technical challenges of building two 40-kilometer (25 mi) bridges or a more than 80-kilometer (50 mi) tunnel across the strait, another major challenge is that, as of 2022, there is nothing on either side of the Bering Strait to connect the bridge to.

The Russian side of the strait, in particular, is severely lacking in infrastructure. No railways exist for over 2,800 kilometers (1,700 mi) in any direction from the strait.[24]

The nearest major connecting highway is the M56 Kolyma Highway, which is currently unpaved and around 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi) from the strait.[25] However, by 2042, the Anadyr Highway is expected to be completed connecting Ola and Anadyr, which is only about 600 kilometers (370 mi) from the strait.[26]

On the U.S. side, an estimated 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) of highways or railroads would have to be built around Norton Sound, through a pass along the Unalakleet River, and along the Yukon River to connect to Manley Hot Springs Road – in other words, a route similar to that of the Iditarod Trail Race. A project to connect Nome, 100 miles (160 km) from the strait, to the rest of Alaska by a paved highway (part of Alaska Route 2) has been proposed by the Alaskan state government, although the very high cost ($2.3 to $2.7 billion, about $5 million per mile, or $3 million per kilometer) has so far prevented construction.[27]

In 2016, the Alaskan road network was extended westwards by 50 miles (80 km) to Tanana, 460 miles (740 km) from the strait, by building a fairly simple road. The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities project was supported by local indigenous groups such as the Tanana Tribal Council.[28]

Russia uses a different track gauge from the US and Canada

Another complicating factor is the different track gauges in use. Mainline rail in the US, Canada, China, and the Koreas uses standard gauge of 1435 millimeters. Russia uses the slightly broader Russian gauge of 1520 mm.
Solutions to this break of gauge include:

• To have all cargo in containers, which are fairly easily reloaded from one train to another. This is used on the increasingly popular China–Europe rail freight route, which has two breaks of gauge. It is possible to transfer a 60 container train in one hour.
• Another solution is variable gauge axles for locomotives and rolling stock, such as those made by Talgo. A gauge changer modifies the gauge of the wheels while the train traverses the GC equipment at a speed of 15 km/h (4.2 m/s), which is about 4 seconds per railcar. This is faster than is possible with the transfer of ISO containers.