Experts have put forward detailed plans for a tunnel to join Taiwan with the Chinese mainland. The shortest proposed route would be 126 kilometers--more than twice the length of the English Channel Tunnel.And the longest proposed route would be 207 kilometers. A recent conference in xiamen,Fujian Province brought together more than 70 experts.The event was cosponsored by universities from Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.Fujian is the province where both proposed mutes would begin. There is no direct passenger access between the mainland and Taiwan by air or sea at the moment. Experts say that it is better to start research sooner rather than later,although there is a lack of government funding .There  are no technical problems t0 build a Taiwan tunnel.But it will require an improved political relationship across the Straits. A professor of TsinghHa University said,"A special feature of  huge projects is that the period of preparation is longer than the  period of construction." For example,he said,the English channel Tunnel took 14 years of planning and had been discussed for two centuries.And preparations for the huge Three Corges dam on the Yangze River began in the 1950s. The xiamen conference focused on the longest southern route,which would  use the Taiwan-controlled  islands of Jinmen  and Penghu as steppingstones. The first stage of the new project could be a bridge to cross the five kilometers between Xiamen and Jinmen.This would mean that traveling from Xiamen to Jinmen by car would only take five minutes. The longest tunnel now being planned anywhere in the world is the 54-kilometer land tunnel to link Lyon in France with Turin in  Italy.The tunnel will not be completed until 2015-2020. Which of the following is NOT true?
Universities both at home and abroad have sponsored the plan. If the project is completed,the world's longest tunnel will appear.    . You can't reach Taiwanfrom the mainland directly at present. The starting point of the proposed tunnel is in Fujian.