US-Russia Tunnel? Ex -US Senator Suggests His Way of Linking the Two States

Instead of confronting each other, a former Senator from Alaska has suggested a way of bringing the two quarreling countries, the US and Russia, close to each other: the former politician proposed constructing a tunnel under the Bering Strait, similar to the one beneath the English Channel which connects Britain and France.

“This is absolutely feasible and not harder than to build a tunnel beneath the English channel,” an online Russian construction journal quotes Mike Gravel, a former Democratic United States Senator from Alaska who served two terms from 1969 to 1981 as saying. Gravel was a candidate in the 2008 US presidential election.

“Instead of exchanging threats, we need to work on projects unifying the nations,” added the former politician.

He called for the application of new technologies which are currently used in the defense industry for the benefit of the whole of mankind.

The length of the tunnel under the strait would amount to approximately 80 km. It would have the facilities for a magnetic cushion train, which would run north from the 'lower 48' United States to Alaska via Canada, before linking to Russia and stretching south to join with the route of China's “New Silk Road”, reaching a top speed of 600 kilometers per hour.

Thus the two countries could “reap huge economic benefits” from the supplying of goods from Eurasia to the Western Hemisphere.

However, his idea isn't particularly new.

Back in March 2015 The Siberian Times reported that then-Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin had proposed a plan for a massive trans-Siberian high-speed railway and motorway that would link Russia’s eastern border with the US state of Alaska, crossing the narrow stretch of the Bering Sea that separates Asia and North America.

The idea was for the Trans-Eurasian belt Development (TEPR) to reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, via the heart of Siberia and the Far East.

The project suggested construction not only of a new train network built alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway, but the construction of major roads, pipelines for oil and gas, and the laying of facilities for electricity and water supplies.

The mega transportation route was supposed to span the entire length of Russia, and link into existing networks in Europe and Asia. It would have created the first ever modern route from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west.