Light at the end of the tunnel for a Russia-Alaska train link?

MOSCOW —  For more than a century, entrepreneurs and engineers have dreamed of building a tunnel connecting the eastern and western hemispheres under the Bering Strait -- only to be brought up short by war, revolution and politics.

Now die-hard supporters are renewing their push for the audacious plan -- a $65-billion highway project that would link two of the world’s most inhospitable regions by burrowing under a stretch of water connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Arctic Ocean.

Russians and Americans alike made their pitch for the project at a conference titled “Megaprojects of Russia’s East” this month in Moscow.

“It’s time to rewrite the old slogan, ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ ” said Walter Hickel, a former Alaska governor and Interior secretary under President Nixon. “It’s time to proclaim, ‘Workers, unite the world!’ ”

A Russian economics ministry official tossed cold water on the idea, saying he wanted to know who planned to pay the mammoth bill. But Hickel was unfazed, saying the route would unlock hitherto untapped natural resources and bolster the economies of Alaska and Russia’s Far East.

The proposed 68-mile tunnel would be the longest in the world. It would also be the linchpin of a 3,700-mile railroad line stretching from Yakutsk -- the capital of a gold- and mineral-rich Siberian region about the size of India -- through extreme northeastern Russia, in waters up to 180 feet deep, to the western coast of Alaska. Winter temperatures in the region routinely hit minus 94.

By comparison, the undersea tunnel that is currently the world’s longest -- at 30 miles -- connects Britain and France.

That raises the prospect of some tantalizingly exotic routes. Train riders could catch the London-Moscow-Washington express, conference organizers suggested.

Lobbyists said the project was guaranteed to turn a profit after 30 years. As crews construct the road and rail link, they said, the workers also would build oil and gas pipelines and lay electricity and fiber-optic cables. Trains would whisk cargos at up to 60 mph 260 feet beneath the seabed.

Eventually, 3% of the world’s cargo could move along the route, organizers hope.

Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of the Russian agency that manages special economic zones, injected a note of sobriety to the heady talk of linking East and West by road and rail. He said his ministry would invest in the project only when private investors were committed to building it.

“As a ministry employee, I am used to working with figures and used to working with projects that have an economic and financial base,” Bystrov said. “The word prozhekt has a negative meaning in Russian. I want this prozhekt to turn into a project.”

The idea has a long history. Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, twice approved a similar plan, perhaps eyeing the gold- and oil-rich territory that the Russian Imperial government had sold to the United States before the turn of the 20th century.

World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution doomed both attempts.

Despite the allure, there were signs at the conference that there is no light at the end of this particular tunnel. A top economic advisor to President Vladimir V. Putin, as well as the Russian railway minister, who had been billed to speak, pulled out at the last minute.

The feasibility study alone would cost $120 million and take two years, organizers said. Construction could take up to 20 years.

Vladimir Brezhnev, president of the Russian construction conglomerate Transstroi, said the technology to tackle the construction already existed.

“Perhaps not all of us will be involved in this,” he told conference participants. “But as an engineer I wish I could be.”

A statement adopted at the conference called on Russia, the United States, Japan, China and the European Union to endorse the tunnel as part of their economic development strategies. It urged government officials to raise the issue at the Group of 8 summit in Germany in June.

George Koumal, president of the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group -- the noncommercial organization pushing the project -- said that although many people had seen Britain from France and vice versa across the English Channel, there has been little communication between people on either side of the strait.

“There are very few people who have stood on the beach in Alaska,” he said. “Seemingly you can stretch out your hand and touch Mother Russia.”