AHC: Major Highway connecting Alaska & Siberia

The Bering Straits are around 50+ miles across (85 km, and 30-50 meters deep). To build a causeway that means a fill of 85,000 x 40 x 60 = 204,000,000 cubic meters of fill more or less. We'll assume this is built similar to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel with areas of causeway, some tunnels (for shipping). Of course the difficulty will be constant need for more fill as the scouring from the ocean currents and tidal action will be severe. The total excavations for the Panama Canal were around 60,000,000 cubic meters so this is 3.5x as much. Of course this does not include how much steel, concrete and whatever else is needed doing construction in some of the worst conditions year round anywhere in the world. The Seikan tunnel in Japan between Honshu and Hokkaido is about 23.5km under the sea bed so doing this all tunnel would be more than 2x this, however that would be much more practical than a bridge-tunnel.

So...technically could it be done, however this would make the "bridge to nowhere" previously planned in Alaska look like a neighborhood project for nothing. Even for the Soviets, doing this is beyond economically ridiculous. Connecting Providenya to the rest of Russia by rail or decent road would be a project that would make the trans-Siberian RR look like a basement model train layout.
What would be the environmental effects of a Trans-Bering causeway? I assume any mixing of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans would be badly disrupted.
 

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What would be the environmental effects of a Trans-Bering causeway? I assume any mixing of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans would be badly disrupted.
The only good side of this project is that making the tunnel the other way around - i.e. under Atlantic would be harder
 
Most likely solution is a tunnel http://www.interbering.com/

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Quite the ponzi scheme! x'D
 
The challenge is to get a major military and/or commercial highway connecting Alaska and Siberia built between 1945 and 1991.
Based on infrastructure logics and your political PoD which cities would it connect?

Rule: Both the USSR and the USA must remain communist and capitalist respectively
Given that there isn't a 'major military and/or commercial highway' between Alaska and the lower 48, nor, on the Soviet side, to the Bering Strait....

I could see a weird WWII situation where the US, simply looking at a map, and not worrying about weather, decides to attack Japan along a northern invasion route in addition (or instead of) the Central Pacific and South West campaigns.
So the AlCan Highway gets built, firstly, and a seaport is built at the mouth of the Yukon (goods brought up through Canada are either floated down the Yukon in the summer, or pulled on the ice, in the winter). With a rail / highway option progressing from that port back to eastern Alaska on a lower priority

Meanwhile, <handwavium> the Japanese don't allow US shipping to go through to Vladivostok. Since most LL to the Soviets was carried on US ships, this is a problem. So the Soviets start building rail / highway through Eastern Siberia to a new port north of Kamchatka.

Well, of course, the war's over before all the infrastructure's in place, but it's well under way, and bureaucratic initiative means they get completed.

Then, later, in the ´60s, Krushchev (or equivalent) normalizes relations with the West, and in a great show of unity, make an announcement on the Diomede islands about the trans Bering Highway/Rail connexion.

(Two announcements - one on Big Diomede and one on Little Diomede, one in Russian, one in English.)
 
For a wartime quickie project (If any such huge project could be called that), their is always THIS, on an even bigger and more expensive scale.

If this were to be part of a project to connect 5 of the 7 continents with a multi-level, super railway capable of carrying a significant % of cross pacific trade, then it would neither be to expensive nor a waste, but for anything less than that, it would probably not be worth the effort.
 
If this were to be part of a project to connect 5 of the 7 continents with a multi-level, super railway capable of carrying a significant % of cross pacific trade, then it would neither be to expensive nor a waste, but for anything less than that, it would probably not be worth the effort.

Really, I don't think you'd ever get this without that. Maybe something involving the Chinese?
 
A successful Henry Wallace presidency could definitely push towards this. Preferably along with an earlier death of Stalin to make US-USSR post-war cooperation plausible. If there is the will, these governments could put in enough effort for infrastructure prestige projects. The early UN would love to propose international superhighways. The competition to complete each superpower's allotted section of UN Highway One could divert some east-west tensions into productive directions. Other routes would be planned for Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Americas, with the long term goal of linking the states of the United Nations together as a precursor to world governance.

Any project this large would need to be completed in stages, and there are a lot of theoretical benefits to just building the land highway sections first. Russia always has an interest in increasing settlement in Siberia and the Far East. The US-Canadian side already has a simple wartime highway to expand from, and improved transportation could be justified by opportunities for extractive and energy development. Alaska has more than enough hydro electric potential to arouse a New Dealer. The energy from a few large dams, and eventually nuclear energy, could electrify a railway along the route, while also providing heat and light to get settlers through the winter.

Because many people just don't want to move to Siberia or Alaska, it'd be easier to induce other, politically beneficial migrations. Fulfilling a superpower's responsibility to accept refugees and humanitarian could be seen as a way to legitimize the UN system, and win propaganda points. For US liberals Alaska could serve as a conveniently empty region in which to settle groups like African Americans or Chinese immigrants, who'd have more trouble in the lower 48. Depending on how Stalinist the Soviets are feeling they have plenty of Axis POW labor to build their part of the highway, and perhaps force to settle it as well (a hamfisted way to recoup population losses).

Even with the best of luck a project like Bering highway takes time, and there's plenty which could derail it, but if the capability and vision to build such a highway was established early, future leaders could see it fully through. If both sides are building on land, a simple regular car/cargo ferry service between the Bering Straight termini could be sufficient to link the routes together until enough funding and know-how can be assembled to build a massive bridge.
 
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