Nobody was interested when I proposed MY IDEA of how to do it. It involves pulling the large drain plug at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and draining it until the pre-existing land bridge reappears.
Very low cost!
Also I got the idea from an episode of Super Chicken, so you know it’s legit.
Honestly, it’s been driven across a few times. I think the political unrest and civil war has had nearly as much to do with not building a road than the terrain. There are also some political reasons for not doing it, with concerns about increasing logging in the area, problems with making it easier for barnyard animals to be transported across (leading to more transmission of diseases).
The thing that really surprises me is that there isn’t a regular ferry between Panama and Columbia. I would think it would be a slam dunk, but they keep starting up and failing economically…
There isn’t even a road from Fairbanks in the interior to the coast other than Anchorage, which is no where near the proposed bridge site. The only surface transport route from Fairbanks to the west coast of Alaska is the Yukon River.
OK…Cape Town to Tierra del Fuego then!
Donnie, is that you?
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/07/11/crossing-the-uncrossable-a-tally-of-those-whove-driven-the-darien-gap/
http://www.range-rover-classic.com/Home/range-rover-darien-gap/darien-breakthrough
You want a Russki invasion? 'Cause that’s how a Russki invasion starts. /obvious
Worst remake of Red Dawn ever.
They built a tunnel between England and France, not a bridge. I assume there was a reason for that, whether based on economics or safety or whatever. The Bering Strait would be like 2½ Chunnels.
And for those kinds of distances you’d think rail transportation might be more significant than road vehicles. It’s really far from civilization on both sides, and I’d imagine the weather isn’t fun to drive in.
I initially read that as 60 meter dice. I was confused but willing to support the project.
Basically, cheaper and interfered less with the heavy maritime traffic.
Seattle is closest as the crow flies but improving the rail connections between Fairbanks and places like New York (almost entirely through Canada) and Texas/Louisiana might be more important.
“Roll for dam- ack! run!”
Another daft megaproject that still gets taken seriously for some reason is a tunnel between Japan and Korea. It was first proposed in 1917, when:
a) Korea was a colony of Japan
b) mass air travel did not yet exist
c) loading and unloading cargo was a slow and labour -intensive process because shipping containers did not yet exist
No, brother, you need to reach back to the Rock Hudson-Cathy Lee Crosby-David Soul movie World War III. That’s Alaska fighting the Russian Bear.
And then I can take the sandbags down from around Mar-a-Lago, the most tremendous golf resort in the world.
the Czech adventurers Zikmund and Hanzelka made the trip too, in a specially equipped Tatra. Their first trip was from 1947 to 50 and went from Europe through Africa and then up South America to Mexico. I’m not sure if they crossed the Darien Gap but I have access to the books and will have a look through them. They later did another multi year journey in the late 50s eastward through Asia to Japan and southeast Asia through India. Zikmund is still alive and just turned 100.
Because driving 50 miles along a bridge knowing that Sarah Palin was watching you the entire time would give anyone the wiggins to the point they wouldn’t bother.
Yeah I think the English channel is a good candidate for a tunnel because it is shallow. I saw an article about a proposed Gibraltar tunnel and because the water there is so deep, the pressure on the tunnel would be huge. Similar arguments presumably apply for the Bering strait.
