China May Build an Undersea Train To America 348
New submitter howtokilltime sends this news from the Washington Post: "China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska."
Deja Vu (Score:2, Interesting)
This was an actual thing on Seaquest DSV.
Though in practicality, the bering straight crossing gets proposed every year by Russia or some other billionaire in Asia-Pacific, but never from the US side.
There are plenty of technical problems but I think the founding problem is that we, as humans, have not mastered the sea, there's no undersea colonies, therefor there is no practical reason to have an undersea transportation network. You think oil spills are a bad idea, and derailments are a fact of life, imagine what would happen if there was a transpacific or transatlantic crossing that was treated exactly the same way. One fuckup and the entire line is destroyed. Ask the cities that have transport tunnels why they haven't built any more. A) Cost, B) in case of fire, die quietly.
Re:A nice idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is the Boston Big Dig so 'bad'? I ask this honestly, because I don't know much about the big dig at all, and since I know very well in Holland there are many, many tunnels for both rail and cars that are more or less equal to the engineering required in Boston IMHO.
More or less because it was done in America where the government always goes with the lowest bidder, meaning corners get cut (the epoxy issue) and runs into the fact that, Americans as a whole (albeit less so in the huge metropolitan areas like NYC), actively avoid public transit.
Passengers (Score:2, Interesting)
For freight, you're absolutely right. When "the slow boat from China" is fast enough, cntainer ships are absolutely the most economical approach. For passengers though, a high-speed rail link between continents might make sense. For international business in 2050 it might be economical... although I am not sure how it might compete with the future versions of the Airbus A380 or Boeing 787...
Re:What an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, I didn't know that Alaska was bought from the Russians. I see on wiki that it was bought for $7.2 million. Which is $119 million in 2014. Which makes Alaska worth about 1/25th the value of Beats by Dr Dre.
Funny old world.