China plans to build a railway from Beijing to the US

Gabriella Munoz

Wednesday, 14 May 2014 //  http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20141305-25511.html

China’s new high-speed rail network will include a 13,000-km underwater tunnel across the Pacific.  Image: chungking/Shutterstock Railway engineering doesn’t get more ambitious than this. China’s newly unveiled plan to connect the world by high-speed rail includes lines to London, Germany, Turkey, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, but their “express to the US” is the most ambitious part of the project. The US line, explains Tomas Jivanda from The Independent, will “travel up through Siberia, across the Bering Strait to Alaska and down through Canada” before reaching the US – that’s about 13,000 km (8,100 miles). This isn’t the first time that engineers envision a tunnel between Asia and the US. Back in 2007 Russian authorities announced the TKM-World Link, which aimed to connect Russia with the western coast of Alaska. The tunnel would have been 103-kilometres long and, if built, would have become the longest tunnel in the world. The TKM-World Link was featured in Discovery Channel’s series Extreme Engineering. If current China’s plans succeed the US-China link will become the world’s longest underwater tunnel. Wang Meng-shu, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Jivanda that the train would travel at 354 km/h (220 mp/h) and the trip would take two days. Reuters reports that China is already is discussions with Russia. We just hope construction starts soon!