Yeah, I would ride it. But that is a lot of new track built through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet just to join the tunnel with any existing track.
It's been proposed many times over decades. (And discussed here just about as much.) It has been shot down repeatedly by the Russians on the basis of cost alone, (their finance minister about a year ago stated to the effect of "where the heck is the money going to come from, as they don't have any to put toward it"), nor does it exist here in public or private sectors. Not to mention ships are still going to be faster from the eastern European ecomonic centers, going west across teh Atlantic and what would be shipped, anyhow? Our trade in North America is with east and southern Asia- Owners of many shipping companies, which aren't going to open up their monopolies to lengthy, slower, costly re-routing. The "Chunnel" ran something like 80% over budget. And then as this rehashed re-hash article states "But an additional 4,000km (2,485 miles) of new track would be needed to link it to Russia's rail network, plus another 2,000km (1,243 miles) to connect to existing services on the US side." PLUS the distance after connecting to the existing Russian rail network, to eastern Europe. And, as we are seeing in fact right now, some manufacturers are moving from Asia back to North America, which puts a nice dent in any economic reason to even consider the idea. The rail extension through Canada to Alaska has been talked about and looked at over and over. Cost, plus hung up endlessly with environmental (jacking up the price) "concerns"..... I suppose this idea will recycle and recycle and recycle almost endlessly.
I believe that it currently takes approximately 5 or 6 days for the largest container ships to transit between container ports in China and the Port of Los Angeles or Long Beach. The equivalent rail container shipment would probably originate near Beijing, China, go north through Manchuria and Russia to the Bering Strait, across Alaska, Yukon Territory, and south through British Columbia to Vancouver or Seattle. This is an estimated straight-line distance of at least 15,000 miles. Rail distance would probably be closer to 20,000 miles due to terrain. Considering that US and Canadian trans-continental freight trains average between 30 and 40 mph terminal to terminal, much less in Russia, Manchuria, and China, non-stop travel time would require about 25 days at best, probably closer to a month allowing for crew changes, fueling, yard time, border crossings, and clearing customs. Also consider that a US or Canadian double-stack train carries about 300 containers, whereas the Emma Mærsk (currently the largest container ship) carries 15,200 TEUs in one trip, the equivalent of about 25 double-stack trains. Personally, I doubt if any government, or bloc of governments would accept this kind of financial return imbalance, let alone any group of private investors.
I could not agree more with Hank. I believe the fastest container ships are now capable of something close to 30mph! They aren't going to build them to be any slower, but probably even faster. The roundabout rail route cannot possibly even start to compete with an enormous capacity ship running that speed non-stop to destination port using as few as less than a fifteen man crew. Which is a huge savings in employee expense right there. Also remember that North American Standard Gauge is almost three inches narrower than Russian tracks. So, either someone needs to perfect a regaugable power unit which can withstand heavy, heavy duty pounding, plus regaugable rolling stock or someone will need to build a major transloading facility, with added expenses in reloading, delays, etc. And, if this even had any positive effect on rail traffic in NA, what would need to be expended on rights of way to bring it up to sustaining (plus added maintenance) even heavier traffic levels? It is a premise which might happen some day. But that time is not even close. Right now any expenditures which need to be made on NA rail, need to be directed to our existing infrastructure and even expanding it, before we start buying pie-in-the-sky such as this tunnel.
ACTUALLY it takes about an average of 11 days from China to the USA via container ship. They're extremely heavy and bulky and can't go as fast as more svelte ocean liners or naval ships do. Furthermore, when they arrive in the US they can take up to a week to clear customs at port. So the actual travel time from on-the-ship to off-the-ship takes up to three weeks.
True of the older ships. Newer versions are a bit faster. Such as what Hank named. They aren't quite the plodders of old any more. Port and customs times I doubt would be that greatly different from what is required to to the same as yard work and customs for rail, when comparing one ship versus how many trains to be equivilant? I'm going to check with a couple people I know at a major port for load times, etc.
I agree with Hank - container ships are getting bigger and bigger (exhibit A = Emma Maersk) and faster and faster. There would be no economic advantage to building such a huge project. However, ideas like this are floated around every now and then as a kind of prod in people's imaginations so that some enterprising researcher or engineer might come up with some new construction technology to make building ordinary construction projects a little easier, a little cheaper, and even a little safer. It's a bit like concept cars - you'll never see a car exactly like that in production (it would be way too expensive) but a few years down the road, the ideas developed will show up in ordinary production vehicles.
Further research shows that I had underestimated the transit time between Hong-Kong and Los Angeles. Transit time would be about 10 days instead of 6 for a vessel similar to the Emma Mærsk capable of 25.5 Kts. Still that is far less than an estimated 30 days for rail transit via the Bering Strait. Furthermore, the Emma Mærsk requires a crew of only 13 for the entire trip, instead of at least 120 needed on-board for a single freight train (30 days @ two 12-hour crews per day @ 2 persons per crew equals 120 persons per trip). As far as turn-around time at a container port, I watched a program on either Discovery or Science channel that showed an 18 hour (IIRC) arrival to departure for the exchange of a full container load at a southern California container port. Of course "full container load" shown on that program was probably half of the 15,200 TEUs that the Emma Mærsk can carry. Still, trans-pacific shipping is far more efficient and economical than would be possible by freight rail via the Bering Strait using today's technology.
Of course there's also the other ongoing 'dream' of a bridge across that gap. (And also someone has spent (been given?) a few $M to produce the plans for it.) Cheaper than a tunnel probably, but still never happen simply because of the 6000 miles or so of connections required. Unlike the English Channel or the Alps this bridge/tunnel is a proposed connection between nowhere and nowhere. (Sorry to any Alaskans reading this, but that's the bottom line I'm afraid )
I suppose that was just a poorly researched article, but they went through all the trouble of making the nifty video. I recall watching a ship being loaded with cars in Veracruz, Mexico. i think it took about a day and half to get it loaded. Probably half a day to unload the train. I suspect the train got there before the auto carrier ship did. It's the unloading/reloading that kills time. Right now Mexico has a lot of rail traffic for moving containers across land from Pacific to Atlantic and then back onto ships for other parts. I was thinking that this idea for a Russia US line would kill that, but this line would be specifically for Russia to US trade, so it wouldn't hurt Mexico's railways at all. I don't know, stuff gets tossed around. I recall the oil pipe line was a big boost for people needing work. Obama (love him or hate him) has signed some legislation regarding high speed trains, though I do not know the details. So there must be a desire to create big projects that get people working, at least on our side of the planet.
Just heard back from a friend who is now retired from port crane operation. Smaller ships he said they generally had a scheduled 24 hour turnaround- Unload and reload. Larger ones he said up to two days. That is multiple cranes at once, each going 24 hours a day.
