If you’re Russian, friends with Vladimir Putin, have tonnes of money and are a possibility for the next President, it’s a safe bet to assume you can do whatever you darn-well please. This was probably the logic behind Vladimir Yakunin’s crazy scheme to build a monstrous superhighway between New York and London, through Siberia.
Yakunin is the head of Russian Railways and proposes that the road should follow a similar path to the trans-Siberian railway that currently links St Petersburg to Beijing via Vladivostok.
The road will cost trillions of dollars, but may run into a couple of problems crossing the Bering Strait, that 88km stretch of freezing water between Alaska and Siberia. If it does go ahead, it will link up with American and European road systems, like the autobahn, for the rest.
Quoted in the Siberian Times, Yakunin called the proposed road “an inter-state, inter-civilisation project”.
London to New York would be somewhere close to 20,000km which is one hell of a road trip and quite a few mix tapes.
I wonder what the food at a Siberian highway servo would be like?
Image via CNN
Words by Simon Toppin