Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica
Reply #19 –
It certainly would be Chimerica (with quite a bit of Russia and Canada thrown in), it is also blue sky thinking, and one of the international links mentioned in an earlier thread of mine. It might be time that the Americas and Australia were linked with the rest of the world.
The actual
Bering Strait crossing in itself isn't particularly hard, it would be a great technical feat, but nothing exceptional. The climate and conditions, and the challenge of moving construction materials and facilities would make it harder.
The problem lies in connecting a bridge in the middle of nowhere with the rest of the world. This is by far the most expensive and challenging problem. There is a whole lot of nothing, with very lousy weather. The massive detour through nowhere is hurting the business case, not only the construction cost, but especially the time it will take to get to market.
A ship doesn't move particularly fast, say 40 km/h or 25 mph, but it can move direct, something a Siberian-Alaskan rail line wouldn't. A Eurasian backbone would, as the article say, be in the opposite situation. Whether going from Beijing through Moscow or Tehran, it would go fairly straight while the ships that have to take the detour around Singapore and Suez. Even so, almost all the traffic go by ship, very little by rail. This is primarily an IT/organisational problem, the cargo trains spend most of their time standing still, processing papers.