The tunnel under the Bering Strait is a railway project of Tunnel under the Bering Strait, recurring since the 19th century.

History

In 1849, a governor of the Colorado was the first to imagine such a project, at one time when immense the Alaska was still a Russian territory (repurchased by the United States in 1867).

In 1905, the French engineer Loïc Lebel proposed with the Russian government to build a railway tunnel under the Bering Strait.

Since the Years 1960, the former governor of the Alaska, is one of the burning defenders of the project.

The current project

An economic file of feasibility is with the examination with the Council of study of the producing forces (CEFP) of Russia, sponsored by the Russian ministry of Economic development and the Trade and by the Academy of Science of Russia.

The tunnel would have a length from 100 to 110 kilometers (double of the Channel tunnel) and would connect, roughly, Ouelen (Péninsule Tchouktche in Russia) and Wales (Alaska, the United States). It would be necessary between 15 and 20 years to build it. According to an estimate made in the Years 1990, the realization of this project would cost 65 billion dollars (48 billion euros), because it would be necessary to build a total of 6.000 km railways. It is indeed necessary to build a connection to connect the tunnel with dimensions Russian with the line of the Transsibérien more to the south and American side with the continental network. The crossed areas are for the moment deserted and without great factorys site industrial being able to justify such an investment. The partisans of the project advances that would allow the development of these areas and that the tunnel would shelter also a pipeline and a line with high voltage. According to the CEFP, the return on investment would be 30 years as from the moment when the transcontinental railway will reach the output envisaged of 70 million tons per annum, which is comparable with the goods traffic of Suez and Panama Canal. Indeed according to its promoters, this tunnel should ensure, in the long term an intercontinental freight comparable with those of channels like Panama or Suez (approximately 70 million tons in 2006) is 3% of the world traffic. But this estimate of traffic is disputed in Russia even. The managing director of UPS Russia, Ivan Chatskikh, indicated that such a figure was a " plaisanterie".

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