The proposed route would run through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 200 kilometer underwater tunnel to resurface in Alaska where it would then travel through Canada before arriving in the contiguous United States. The entire trip would take two days with the train traveling at an average of 350 km per hour. Speaking to the Beijing Times, industry expert Wang Mengshu understood discussions were ongoing and that Russia has been considering such a project for many years.
Unsurprisingly, not much else is known about the proposed scheme with no other Chinese railway expert coming forward in support of it, or even if the governments of any of the aforementioned countries have been involved at this stage of the consultation process.
To put the size of the tunnel into perspective, at 200 km long it would be the world’s longest undersea tunnel at more than four times the size of the Channel Tunnel.
