The June 2014 issue of Progressive Railroading has a short paragraph on China's plans to build a rail line to the US. The article is as follows:
"FROM CHINA TO THE U.S.-VIA HIGH SPEED RAIL
China is considering plans to build a high-speed rail line linking the country to the United States. Dubbed the "China-Russia-Canada-America Line" the proposed corridor would run from northeast China up through Siberia, pass through a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait in the Pacific Ocean,then cut through Alaska and Canada to reach the continental United States, according to a report in the Beijing Times. The entire 8,000-mile trip would take two days to complete, with trains operating at average speeds of 220 mph."
It would be great to see this happen but it will not occur in my lifetime. Costs were not mentioned but I expect it to be in the range of a trillion dollars.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Phoebe VetThere are people who say it can't be done, and people who make things happen. So I would never say "It can't, or won't, be done", but I'm also not going to run out and invest in the project.
I think Dave(Phoebe Vet) is on the right track.
Over a long period of time around here , we have had Threads, (and stories from other publications, as well.) that offered plans to Bridge The Bering Straights, with automotive bridges, with rail bridges, and tunnel plans. Rail and Highway links on both ends of those construction options have been key features of those plans.
There have even been serious discussions of the potentials for these plans... One discussion was the eventual extension of the Alaska Railroad (currently being lengthened from Fairbanks to North Pole and on towards Eielson AFB)...
This was a study authorized in 2005 and was top be the base line for lengthening the AAR into Canada and eventually tying it to the American Railroad network. Link to that study on ARR website @ http://economics.gov.yk.ca/rail.htm [There is also a link on the "Studies" portion of the ARR site that has the whole plan in a PDF format.
It looked at a number of optional routes one was the Partially completed railroad ROW to Deese L:ake, B.C. { Plan was top eventually hook up with the ARR.} read about that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC_Rail
The 'Wikipedia' site is a pretty interesting read of some of the machinations of Canadian Politics, involving the PGE RR [Pacific Great Eastern RR] which becae British Columbia Rail [BCR} and then finally under CNR [Canadian Nationa R], and what can hap[pen when a political plan gets hung up in a political bru-ha-ha.
Apparently, there is still an interest in eventually making this 'connection' at least between the "Lower 48" and Alaska, of course will involve Canada, by necessity, as well. Who knows if the Continental Bridging will ever come to be? BUT ion a time when Asia is such an important trading partner...Throw enough money, and will; power at a problem, and it can be solved.
I'm going to hedge my bets. This WILL happen (in about 500 years from now).
46 miles of open ocean and many miles of tundra to cross. Doubtful that it will be economically feasible..
Norm
We had a thread on this about two and a half months ago. You'll find it here.
The future looks bright On that train all graphite and glitter Undersea by rail Ninety minutes from New York to Paris Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.
http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/I-G-Y-lyrics-Steely-Dan/1F736A8B746A954B48256D49000F82CD
ndbprrWatch Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel one time and then tell me how they will accurately lower tunnel sections and allign them and how divers will survive in 30 degree water.
Robots. Robots, or men remotely opperating powersuits, will do it.
It IS the Twenty First Century!
Pretty soon somebody will propose the fool idea of putting a tunnel under the English Channel.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusmanPretty soon somebody will propose the fool idea of putting a tunnel under the English Channel.
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henry6dehusman Pretty soon somebody will propose the fool idea of putting a tunnel under the English Channel. Or land a man on the moon.
dehusman Pretty soon somebody will propose the fool idea of putting a tunnel under the English Channel.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Sidinghenry6dehusman Pretty soon somebody will propose the fool idea of putting a tunnel under the English Channel. Or land a man on the moon. Assuming they did land on the moon.
The Chunnel could have been built in the 1960's, however, there were both political and military reasons it was not. One of the reasons the Chunnel was finally built was because the Red Army wasn't a threat to slam through the Fulda Gap like it might have in the 1960's. This proposed tunnel will never be built because the United States and China still see each other as a military threat.
Also just what would you ship? I see that large all cargo aircraft could be developed to ship high value cargo between the two countries and certainly container ships could continue to handle cargo they now presently carry at a fraction of the cost of building this railroad. This railroad would have to make economic sense first before any construction could begin; I just don't see it either way.
It's still a pretty far-fetched idea, but one that has definitely moved a lot closer to practicality in the half-century since i began to follow the rail industry.
One of the few contributions made to human progress by the mistake that came to be called the Soviet Union was an increased ability to sustain economic activity in extremely cold climates; and I don't have much doubt that tunneling technology which has already conquered the Tsugaru (Hokkaido) Strait and the English Channel would (eventually) be able to take on the Bering Strait as well,
The question is: Will the markets ever generate enough potential commerce to justify the investment?
Something on he order of 80% of the world's population lives in the Old World, and a similar, though less-pronounced disparity exists between the temperate vs. tropical climates, Yet large portions of what has been described as "the empty quarter" are capable of agriculture, and the possibility of turning to the sea for more of our food has not been ruled out. And the efforts to defuse the "population bomb" continue to slowly gain ground.
So if these trends are linked to a continued spread of true parliamentary pluralism (i'll leave it to others here to decide whether the current folly of infatuation with Big Brother/Sister in the U S and parts of Europe will burn itself out) -- it becomes a possibility that global "mega-markets" for both consumer goods and the extracted feedstocks to produce them could evolve. At that point, the question merely becomes one of the relative efficiency of land vs. water transport.
But it also has to be recognized that even a respected trade publication, which ought to be the first to grasp and emphasize the disparity between workaday railroading and the dreams fed to the public by Hollywood, its Madison Avenue shills and allies, and that mostly-young, female and impressionable segment of the public which doesn't care to look too deeply when technical and economic realities are introduced, made the mistake of labeling this idea as "High Speed Rail".
As with the ongoing controversy over climate change (which is real and worthy of slow, careful, and not-that-expensive study), vs. the media circus about "global warming" (clearly linked to a push toward an expanded environmental bureaucracy which might not even be able to agree on a plan of "action") we need to separate more of the fantasy from the feasible.
It would never happen. Look at all the studies to connect Alaska with the lower 48. And 220 mph! Give me a break. Of course if China wants to build it we could be getting some of our money back.
The technology is there to build the line from China to the lower 48. What is missing is the financing. Will there be sufficient revenue to ammortise the huge investment in the project? I think that ifit is ever built it must mostly funded by government.
A quick look at a map yielded the following:
The part of Asia that is of economic interest to shippers is, basically, industrial China. The Japanese home islands are isolated from the mainland, and South Korea is isolated by North Korea. Eastern Siberia isn't exactly a hotbed of commercial activity.
The part of Alaska that has enough development to need significant transportation is at the opposite end of the state from the approaches to a Bering Strait crossing.
I won't say that there will never be a connection between extreme northeast Asia and extreme northwest North America - but I will say (once again) that we'll be mining asteroids and launching interstellar probes before it's ever built.
Chuck
Narig01 I agree with you re China's long range thinking. Our problems is that our CEOs have to dance to the Wall Street slugs. Wall Street wants instant gratification. If the next quarter is not good Wall Street calls for his canning. Due to this CEOs make decisions to make the current quarter report look good to please Wall Street even if these decisions will damage the country 5-10 years in the future. If C P Huntington had to dance to Wall Street we would never have trains to the west coast. When are we going to wake up and make decisions for the long term of the company rather than the street? Too many of the street people are like the Wolf of Wall Street. ( In all fairness I have significant investment in the street.)
Phoebe VetRemember when we called them "corporate raiders" and they were bad guys? Now we call them "venture capitalists" and they are heroes. As long as we worship at the alter of commerce without conscience in pursuit of every last nickel possible, we will live fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimm Phoebe VetRemember when we called them "corporate raiders" and they were bad guys? Now we call them "venture capitalists" and they are heroes. As long as we worship at the alter of commerce without conscience in pursuit of every last nickel possible, we will live fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter. Many (not all) of the latter are simply playing at casino capitalism, not really investing in the long term, ongoing businesses that serve a useful function.
Johnny
A tunnel under the Bering strait? I remember reading a Superman comic where he built a highway bridge across the Atlantic complete with motels and gas stations so I guess anything is possible. That was back in the sixties and I've been to the New York World's Fair and I'm STILL waiting for my own hovercar!
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