Posted on 09/13/2002 11:47:38 AM PDT by Trailer Trash
Web posted Monday, August 26, 2002
Bering Strait dream won't die
By James MacPherson
The Alaska Journal of Commerce Reporter
http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/082602/foc_bering_dream.shtml
George Koumal admits he's seen plenty of eyes roll, heads shake and jaws drop while pitching a $40 billion submarine railroad tunnel connecting the continents of Asia and North America at the Bering Strait.
Koumal, head of the Tucson, Ariz.-based Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group, says the link is the only thing missing from Alaska's ability to become the economic hub of the world. A world, he says, that will see an economic renaissance as never before if only a tunnel were bored beneath the Bering Strait, opening access to vast untouched natural resources in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and eastern Russia.
Koumal says he's far from alone in his beliefs, with a worldwide membership not of pipe dreamers but of astute engineers, economists and forward thinkers from everyday walks of life.
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Murkowski |
Though not members of the lofty-named Interhemispheric Group, Alaska Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski says the idea of the tunneled trade route has merit, as does state Rep. Jeanette James, a North Pole Republican.
And for at least 30 years, the "Little Man," what Wally Hickel calls his inner voice, has told the former Alaska governor that building a rail tunnel connecting the hemispheres is the right thing to do.
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James |
"Write what you want," Hickel told the Journal, "it's going to happen."
The 60-year-old Koumal said he believes the project will be built in his lifetime and he says, "I smoke."
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Nottingham |
Naysayers are many, Koumal admits, but usually they can be swayed by asking them to do one simple thing: "Look at a globe."
The Czech-born engineer and businessman said all that keeps a passenger train from going from London to New York, or a grain train from Kansas City to Bombay, is the 55-mile stretch of water across Bering Strait, a once dry link where scientists believe man and animals migrated eons ago.
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Hickel |
The grand trade route
The tiny sliver between Alaska and Russia has tantalized developers for years, at least since the advent of railroads in the first part of the 19th century, Koumal said.
The entire project, which includes building the tunnel and the associated railroad tracks leading to it, would be the largest construction project ever done, he said.
It's a project so grand that the "Panama Canal and the pyramids of Egypt pale in comparison," he said.
The Bering Strait tunnel would be the largest in the world, and would be twice the size of the Chunnel, the French-British underwater link.
Technically, the tunnel and rail are fairly easy to construct, given the region's geology, Koumal said.
The Russian connection to the tunnel requires some 2,100 miles of track to connect with the Trans-Siberian Railroad at Egvekinot and ultimately to Yakutsk on the Lena River, according to Koumal's group. Then there's the matter of widening existing track in Russia, which uses a narrower gauge rail -- a small detail, Koumal said.
On the Alaska side, only about 1,000 miles of track would be needed to connect the Canadian railroads to Fairbanks, including some 270 miles of new track in Alaska, 570 miles in the Yukon, and 150 miles in British Columbia to Denese Lake or 172 miles to reach Fort Nelson, according to a study by the Koumal's group.
Murkowski has pressed Canada to cooperate with the United States in studying the feasibility of extending the Alaska Railroad to connect with the Canadian rail system. In 2000, Murkowski won approval for legislation and about $6 million for setting up a joint 24-member commission to study the feasibility of extending the railroad to complete a trans-continental link.
But he says the events of Sept. 11 stalled diplomatic negotiations between the U.S. State Department and Canada. Murkowski said he has offered several suggestions to speed up the railroad study process and expects negotiations to start soon.
The Alaska Republican, a longtime rail supporter who now is running for governor, said the age of the railroad has not even started.
"The prospects for trade and commerce are tremendous," Murkowski said of the Bering Strait tunnel.
James says such a railroad can reduce freight costs, improve visitor access, encourage resource development and reduce vehicle emissions.
James has been a strong promoter of linking the Alaska Railroad with the rest of North America's rail network, and the world.
"Imagine going from the lights of Broadway to the Northern Lights, or hauling freight from Kansas to Pakistan on a train," James said of the Arctic crossing. "This is a cool idea."
The distance from Fairbanks to the tunnel entrance at the Alaska coast is about 1,000 miles. Along the way are small, mostly Alaska Native villages whose residents have told state officials in surveys that they do not want to be connected to the rest of the world by highways or railroads.
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Click Map for full size version |
Patrick Flynn, spokesman for the Alaska Railroad Corp., said the state-owned railroad has never studied running rail to a Bering Strait crossing, and instead mainly focuses on maintaining track it already owns.
Technically, Flynn believes the rail could be built to the northwest coast of Alaska, but getting the nod by village residents would be tough.
"I would submit to you that those are even larger hurdles than the technical ones," Flynn said.
Dennis Nottingham, an engineer who heads the firm of Peratrovich, Nottingham & Drage Inc., says a bridge is better suited for crossing the Bering Strait.
Tunnel advocates say their method makes more sense, mostly because of the maintenance is less in a tunnel than on a bridge.
"It's the other way around," Nottingham said.
His Anchorage-based engineering firm has offices in Juneau, Seattle and Oregon, and has been recognized as one of world's leaders in Arctic construction, including bridges, docks and oil platforms on Alaska's North Slope.
Nottingham is credited with designing some of the state's largest and most challenging bridge projects.
Technically, Nottingham said, a Bering Strait bridge would be "no big deal."
He believes bridges are inherently safer than tunnels and can be built cheaper. A tunnel alone, according to Koumal, would cost about $15 billion.
Nottingham says he can build a bridge for $10 billion, although he doesn't think either will every be built in the next 50 years or longer.
Nottingham said if it his bridge were to be built, it would be constructed with huge spans across the water midway to Little Diomede Island in Alaska and then 2.5 miles to Big Diomede Island on the Russian side, and across to the Asian continent.
Nearly every steel mill in the world would have to be used to fabricate the amount of steel needed for the bridge project, an economic boom in itself, Nottingham said.
Koumal, a mining engineer by trade, said he respects Nottingham's ideas, but can't be convinced that a bridge is a better idea.
"He's a bridge guy and I'm a tunnel guy," Koumal said.
Little Man, big idea
Wally Hickel claims the idea for a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait is his. In 1972, he told a group of Russians: "Why war? Why not big projects?"
Specifically, he pointed to a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait.
He's been touting the idea since.
Unbeknownst to Hickel, firm plans for the tunnel have been around at least since 1906 when a group of New Jersey businessmen formed a corporation and raised $6 million toward the effort.
In a New York Times article from Oct. 25, 1906, developers boasted that tunnel construction under the Bering Strait would be easy, or as the newspaper termed it, "What is vulgarly known as a cinch."
The devlopers, however, didn't anticipate the Russian Revolution, political upheaval which not only nixed the tunnel plans, but also changed the course of world history.
The matter of money
Hickel and Koumal agree that money for the project will be found, most likely from a collection of corporations who understand the project's significance, and the profits to be reaped.
Koumal is hopeful that governments of the world someday will pony up and help fund the project, too.
At $40 billion, the Bering Strait tunnel project is inconceivably expensive, but it's small potatoes compared to the nearly $360 billion in the United States' defense annual budget, Koumal said. "And let's assume Russia has put up a similar amount."
A happy, friendly Russia, is an economically healthy Russia, Koumal said.
Money will come, Koumal said, when people are educated about the project of uninterrupted rail circling the Earth and the worldwide wealth it would bring.
"We first must teach the intellects of the world that the world is round," Koumal said.
Hmmmm... doesn't sound suitable for any kind of large permanent structure, unless it's possible to punch through it to bedrock. Better off with small, independent structures that just kinda float on top of it -- just don't have any rigid connections to something that may move in a different direction.
There is also the existing Alaska Railroad to look at for experience. Sometimes parts of the bed collapse and the tracks dump half a train onto the tundra. It's not something conducive to a high-speed operation.
Additionally, the purchase of the northeast territories, much the same as we purchased Alaska from the Czar, would provide for a great "flanking manuver" of the Chi-coms.
But on the plus side, can you imagine the way the worlds assorted America haters would react?
here's one
Koreas Set to Break Ground for North-South Railways 9-17-2002 .(Reuters)
I think personally, the 'cowboy' W putting them in the 'axis of evil' camp was taken at face value as it should have been.
So punching a rail may now actually add up?
Not to mention the NW passage opening up by 2010
ciao
TT
The WT has another one on this today..
The WT has another one on this very subject (Korea rail) today..
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