Vehicles drive during sunrise in the Taiga area along the M54 Krasnoyarsk – Mongolia highway, with the air temperature at about – 27 degrees C (-16.6 degrees F), some 120 km (75 mi) south of Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, on December 14, 2011.Reuters File 
The Iditarod race commemorates a 1925 rescue mission that carried diphtheria serum to Nome by sled-dog relay.Reuters File
The head of Russian Railways has suggested an ambitious road project that will connect London and New York via Moscow, through the scenic Trans-Siberian highway.
In rough estimates, the massive trans-Siberian highway will approximately be over 20,000 km long, if Russia is able to find a way to build the road over the ocean between Siberia and Alaska.
According to a report, first published in The Siberian Times, Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin proposed the plan at a meeting of the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Science.
The ambitious plan, dubbed as the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TEPR) project, calls for a major roadway to be constructed along the existing Trans-Siberian railway route.
"This is an inter-state, inter-civilisation, project," Yakunin said, according to The Siberian Times. "The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies."
Yakunin said the road would connect Russia with North America via Russia's far eastern Chukotka region, across the Bering Strait and into Alaska's Seward Peninsula.
The road link would then enter Alaska through the north of the town of Nome, famous for Iditarod sled dog race. The Russian top boss, however, didn't explain how the country's engineers are planning to pass through the ocean that lies between Siberia and Alaska.
As of now, Nome is one of the most isolated regions in the world with no existent road link. The closest road from Nome is over 800 kms away in Fairbanks, which is the unofficial northern terminus of the Alaska Highway.
While such a grand road trip would be excruciating, it certainly would be a great scenic route, provided the Railway boss who is said to be a close friend of Vladimir Putin finds enough funds to materialise the project.
The Siberian Times reports that Vladimir Fortov, the Head of the Russian Academy of Science, said while the project is "very ambitious and expensive. It will solve many problems in the development of the vast region."
