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Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality
Sepa Blackforesta writes: A plan for an epic bridge connecting Russia's easternmost border with Alaska's westernmost border could soon be a reality, as Russia seeks to partner with China. Sijutech reports: "If this mega bridge come to reality, it would be Planet Earth’s most epic mega-road trip ever. The plans have not been officially accepted since specific details of the highway still need to be discussed, including the large budget. Allegedly the plan will cost upwards in the trillions of dollars range."
Why would the west give Russia leverage? We saw them try to exploit the pathetic hold they had on us with the international space station. A diplomatic project we put in place mostly to make the russians feel good... and they tried to fuck us with the olive branch.
We have an existing and quite inexpensive container ship network. Is this rail project going to be cheaper than that? Doubtful and less flexible... and most problematic going through Russian territory which means Russia gets leverage.
I'd be surprised if they got the funding for this... the Chinese might pay for it but who is going to build the US/Canadian leg of it? Because we're not letting Russian or Chinese labor in to do it and that means paying an American/Canadian construction firm... and who is going to do that.
Look, if the politics weren't so shitty, I'd say "fine"... it might make some sense. But the politics are not only shitty but getting shittier all the time.
The US State Department has already effectively admitted that we're in the a second cold war with the Russians. Blood is getting pumped back into old Cold War organs, programs, and operations. In the article cited it points out that Russia is dealing with sanctions from the "West"... aka the US. And they think building a rail road to the US is going to give them independence from US sanctions? How?
The only way I can see that happening is if the US gets addicted to the train network and finds it impractical to maintain sanctions given that the train goes through Russia. Which is basically just another reason for the US to quietly slit this idea's throat and move on.
Look Russia... If you want to do business with the US, you need to make people like me happy. I know... you don't like that... but that's reality.
And here's what I'm going to need:
1. Surrender all claims to the Eastern European countries that don't want to join your club.
2. Embrace and accept the missile shield concept. We'll cut you in so you can have the same tech and maintain parity with us for missile defense. What we want is to make the ICBM obsolete. Help us do that and we'll see that you gain the same advantage.
3. Stop doing your best to troll US foreign policy by giving nuclear tech to the Iranians and similar nonsense. Its very obvious what you're doing and it is not appreciated.
4. Stop trying to use anyone's dependence on something you provide to get leverage in politics. Its a serious problem when the Germans trust you for fuel and then you threaten to cut them off if NATO doesn't play ball. You've done the same thing with various eastern european countries as well. And the whole thing with jacking up the launch costs or saying you might not take US astronauts to the space station was a test... and you fucking failed. We gave you an opportunity to stab us in the back of the thigh with a butter knife just to see what you'd do... and you fucking did it. How can we trust you with anything that could potentially give you leverage over us if you'll exploit even the most f'ing meaningless pressure points to gain laughable advantages?
Russia does this and relations between the US and Russia can be very good. Investment, cooperation, access to markets, access to technology... fucking milk and honey. We'll help them develop their resources and find them a market for it. We'll make them rich.
But that's all contingent on them not being assholes. And that's never happening.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But that seems like a stretch given the effective shipping to ports on the west coast.
The west coast ports for North America. are maxed out and need modernization to accommodate larger shipping vessals.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38e0825e-c677-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html
The Chinese are also spending $50B to build the Nicaragua Canal in Central America to bypass the west coast ports.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/nicaragua_canal_a_giant_project_with_huge_environmental_costs/2871/
The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.
china?
china is currently picking on vietnam, philippines, japan, india, etc., thugging han imperialist efforts to steal land
meanwhile, all is quiet on the northern border with crazy, dying russia
at some point, china will notice that it's stealing speck islands and barren mountains from its neighbors according to hilarious historical made-up "justifications," when russia actually stole vast tracts of resource-rich land from china only 150 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
then things will get interesting with the derelict work force you are talking about, who can easily be handed a gun and told to charge. perhaps china will have some social/ political upheaval, an ultranationalist demagogue will take charge, and, like after every revolution (french, russian, arab spring, etc.) things quickly turn imperial on its neighbors
russia is a failed cult of personality petrostate that everyone hates because it also is a neoimperial thug (only on weak neighbors of course, like any insecure bully). it will continue to decay and have old rusty weapons someday
but china is a rising power a huge economy and with 10x the population of russia will continue to militarize with sophisticated advanced weaponry
THAT is the story with china and siberia, not this silly bridge
the world powers have to talk about how to divide russia when it finally implodes, that's the end game of the trajectory the joke country is currently on
japan gets back sakhalin, kirils
kamchatka would have to be "occupied briefly" by japan and the usa so it is not completely overrun by china when the inevitable happens
i welcome the new countries of tuva, irkutsk, yakusia, etc. (quickly and easily run over by china, and now new north korean style puppet states: i hope not, hopefully more like mongolia)
russia gets pushed back to the urals
and let's not even get started on the revenge that will happen in the european side of things...
hey germany, want to revive konigsberg?
finalnd, you deserve karelia back
abkhazia, crimea...
it's a continuation of the rot and decay that started in 25 years ago with the collapse of the USSR. that's the long term trend that has never been reversed. a brief lull with some petroleum money that is now gone, and mafia goon putin putting a face of denial on that, it doesn't change that trajectory
if you think the kgb thug chest thumping by putin on small, weak georgia and ukraine is supposed to impress anyone other than propagandized neoserfs in a walled media garden inside russia. no: the thugging just isolates russia internationally and makes everyone despise them. so they have absolutely zero friends, and enemies all around when the longterm implosion deepens
and if you think russia's nukes would prevent this scenario: no, any use of nukes would only hasten it
russia: you lost a maritime conflict with a rising japan and then a civil war 100 years ago. get ready for a much more humiliating conflict with china, and much more internal decay
i give it 20-50 years. sooner if china gets internal strife soon and therefore the desperate need to redirect that energy to han ultranationalism on the border
i would actually prefer if it happens in putin's lifetime. let's see that asswipe humiliated. unfortunately, he'll probably die a "hero" and then all the heroic destruction he's done to russia politically and socially will result in the country's serious collapse after he dies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I had the same question, honestly. But it might have some benefits...
A cargo ship has a top speed of under 25MPH (20 knots). A Class 5 freight train can hit 80 MPH and there's no *technical* reason why they couldn't go even faster. Even with the increase in distance by taking the long way around, you can maybe reduce transit time. Such trains could also load and unload deep inland, closer to where the cargo is needed, eliminating multiple handling steps.
I still don't think it's a *good* idea, but it's slightly less crazy than it might initially sound.
=Smidge=
The economic reasons I can think of largely involve more rapid transportation between hubs all over Asia (and maybe even Europe) to hubs in North America. A trip across the Pacific from Hong Kong to Seattle can take two or more weeks, while a rail trip from Hong Kong to Seattle could be done in perhaps one week, depending on how many yard changes would be needed. (Transit times between Hong Kong and the East Coast via the Panama Canal are even longer, taking a month or more, while the additional time required to cross Canada or the US would be measured in days.) Using Google Earth and some admittedly straight lines, the distance from Hong Kong to Seattle was about 6600 miles. If a train can average even 60MPH over that, the trip would take less than five days, and even some curves and detours wouldn't extend it by much. Of course, most train traffic wouldn't originate from Hong Kong, but would instead go directly, more or less, from the other hub cities scattered across China, reducing the factory-to-destination time even further.
Rail gauges might not even need to be considered, since the US and China use the same gauge, and the tracks through Siberia could be laid as dual-gauge or even just 1435mm gauge and the Russians can start adopting that (it would make trade with Europe easier, too).
Such a bridge would have to allow a significant amount of rail traffic to cross, but the economics could work out over a very long term (many decades at least). The trillion-dollar price tag is for a network of roads and rail running from London to New York; the bridge itself would probably be in the range of $100 billion for a road and dual tracks. Amortizing that at 2% interest over 50 years gets annual costs of $3.18 billion for the loan itself.
A North Carolina Dept. of Transportation study placed the approximate cost of a 4000 SEU Panamax vessel at 80% capacity at about $1500 per TEU and a New Panamax (capacity 12,000 TEU) at 51% capacity at about $950 per TEU. Those capacities can be matched using 4.5 or 8.5 trains, respectively, of 180 wagons (the max length allowed in the US) double-stacked and able to handle four TEU each (so 720 TEU). I'm not sure about the basic economics, but I imagine that the costs for train travel are less than that. Even if they're higher per day, they would probably be lower per trip.
If the toll per TEU is about the same as it is in Panama ($72), each nearly-full train crossing would bring in about $50,000. If maintenance consumed a quarter of that and the rest went to the loan, it would require almost 85,000 annual train trips, or about 232 per day. Even at zero interest, it would require more than 53,000 annual train crossings, or about 146 per day, and all of those at around 95% capacity.
However, if the tolls were higher but the cost per TEU were lower, it might work out. At 50 trains per day, the toll would need to be about $250 per TEU (plus some amount for maintenance) to pay off the loan. That's still a lot of trains for two tracks, but it might be workable. This doesn't include any road tolls or oil/gas transit fees for lines running along the bridge, which could add a fair amount, but I'm not sure it would dent it significantly.
Another reason that I can think of, though, is to get part of North America reliant on Russian natural gas, particularly as Alaska's petroleum-derived production slows over the coming decades. That could bring an influence level that's hard to achieve any other way. Russia has a history of slowing or shutting off gas supplies to Ukraine and other places during winter when it wants leverage. I'm sure it would love to have that leverage over the US and Canada as well.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Yes, truckers are cheap because the industry has turned them into the ugliest of sharecroppers where the are paid by the mile, lease the trucks from the company and pay for upkeep on the trucks. Now fuel, that's expensive! And for longshoremen, everything is so automated that the docks are deserted compared to a century ago so the port labor cost per pound is miniscule. Truckers are lucky to get gross $20/hour BEFORE expenses.
The biggest expense in shipping is time: capital setting idle, decaying value due to technological obsolescence, missed market windows, etc. Find some smart MBA at a global company, buy them lunch and let them bend your ear on logistics. That is why so many of your favorite electronic toys arrive via cargo plane.
No, she mentioned it to point out that she was governor of a state that's a lot closer to a semi-hostile foreign power, and more thoughtful about the implications of that than would be the community organizer from Chicago (who had never been in charge of state police, let alone armed national guard installations). She wasn't presidential material, but nor did she claim that the right-next-doorness of Russia was an example of foreign policy experience. Her point was that when you govern a state with a huge energy and fishing and mining economy that's a stone's throw from a looming competitor in those same areas, it becomes part of your daily thought process. She's a clumsy speaker and has some wacky ideological quirks (mostly from having been raised in a religious family culture), but she wasn't wrong to point out, simply in passing, that having Russia and Canada as your next door neighbors while you're governor is different than having Indiana and Missouri as neighbors when you're a community organizer, whatever that actually is.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I have family in Fairbanks that run an industrial business that would inevitably be significantly involved in and enormously impacted by such a project, and I can tell you that there is no talk of or preparation of even the slightest increase in the infrastructure that would be required before this project even began.
The first phase of an initial inquiry into increasing railroad infrastructure from Alaska to the lower 48, about 10 years ago, rung up an estimate of about a dozen billion dollars; everyone involved did the "let me laugh even harder" dance, and a second phase of the inquiry never happened.
That short little hop between Nome and Fairbanks is 500 miles of wilderness. There are no roads in the entire western half of Alaska and nobody is talking about building any.