Printer-friendly versionSend to friend

Notes on the World Land-Bridge

Eurasian Land-Bridge: 27,000 kms of rail lines, 20 countries, 4 billion people

Northern Corridor (Vladivostock-Moscow-Berlin) and Central Corridor

(Peking-Aktogay-Moscow-Berlin) completed as of 1996

Southern Corridor (Shanghai-Delhi-Teheran-Berlin) not completed as of 2002

Key Bottleneck Projects of World Land-Bridge

Bering Strait Tunnel: 85 kms total; given islands (Big and Little Diomede), longest span = 35 kms,

max depth 54 m.; compare to Chunnel, 50 kms with max depth of 45 m., opened 1994.

Darien Gap RR: 100 kms of swamp and mud; also need a second sea-level

Panama Canal and/or Atrato-Truando Canal in Colombia

Sakhalin Bridge: 8 km bridge linking Russian mainland to Sakhalin Island, don't know status

(in 2001, Russia annnounced it would start construction in months)

Sakhalin-Hokkaido Bridge: 40 km bridge or bridge-tunnel under study; Japan's

Hokkaido already linked to Honshu thru 54 km Seikan

tunnel (longest underwater tunnel in the world). When

Sakhalin Bridge and Sakhalin-Hokkaido Bridge are

finished, you could get from Tokyo to Rotterdam by rail,

13,600 kms in 9 days. Maritime route is 20,000 kms and

takes 26 days.

Japan-S. Korea Tunnel: Specifics soon to come.

Gibraltar Tunnel: 14 kms Europe to Africa, but tunnel would have to be 50

kms or longer, to achieve needed depth of 300 m.

Suez Canal Bridge: Two 1 km bridges across the Suez Canal opened in 2001.

Once the World Land-Bridge is completed, you could travel the 20,000 kms from Buenos Aires to Berlin, for example

Total Requirements for Skeleton of Unbuilt Portion

Double-Track RR: 63,650 kms

Steel: 29.2 million tons (world production = 847 million tons)

Cement: 21.0 million tons (world production – 1,520 million tons)