The North American side isn't much better. There's ~1000km from the Bering Strait to Fairbanks, which is the nearest road/rail connection in Alaska. But the Alaska Railroad isn't connected to the rest of North America--you need another ~1500km to connect to the railheads in Canada that would let you travel to any major city in North America. (By comparison, the Russian side is ~2800km from Yakutsk to the Bering Strait).

It should be noted that just because there's no major settlements in a vast area doesn't mean there's nothing there. The Alaska/rest of North America rail connection is constantly being proposed on the basis of being able to hook up mineral extraction operations in the region, although these are marginal enough that the proposals keep falling through. Similarly, the Yakutsk-Magadan region once hosted several industrial concerns along the highway there, but the fall of the Soviet Union caused those production centers to lose viability and collapse.