Channel Tunnel

I

Introduction

Channel Tunnel, tunnel 50 km (31 mi) long, carrying a rail link under the English Channel between Cheriton, near Folkestone, Kent, and Coquelles, near Calais. The tunnel, one of the greatest civil engineering projects of the 20th century, has an ultimate design capacity of 600 trains per day each way. Drive-on/drive-off shuttle trains, operated by the Eurotunnel company, carry cars and lorries. The journey takes 35 minutes. Each shuttle travels at 130 km/h (80 mph) when under the sea, is 800 m (2,625 ft) long, and carries up to 180 cars, or 120 cars together with 12 coaches. Freight shuttles can carry 28 lorries.

There are actually three tunnels: trains travel in two running tunnels 7.6 m (24.9 ft) wide, one on each side of a service tunnel 4.8 m (15.7 ft) wide. The undersea section is 39 km (24 mi) long. There is 195 km (120 mi) of track in all, including 45 km (28 mi) in the United Kingdom terminal and 50 km (31 mi) in the French terminal. Maintenance and emergency services use the central tunnel, and, if necessary, passengers could escape into it on foot in the event of an emergency on board a train.

Eurotunnel has a concession from the British and French governments to run the tunnel until 2052, charging railway operators for access. Through-trains for foot passengers are operated by Eurostar, a joint venture of the British, French, and Belgian national railways. Eurostar trains travel at up to 140 km/h (87 mph) in the tunnel. In 2007, when the final section of the high-speed rail link was constructed, the journey time between London and Paris was set at two hours 15 minutes, while the London to Brussels journey was set at two hours.

II

History of Channel Tunnel Schemes

The French mining engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier is credited with first suggesting a tunnel under the Channel, in 1802. Numerous other schemes emerged over the years. In 1875 the Channel Tunnel Company set up by the British engineer John Hawkshaw was given authority to build a tunnel by the governments of both Britain and France. In 1881 a new Act gave powers to a rival scheme promoted by Hawkshaw's former colleague William Low.

Trial tunnelling started but soon stopped because of concerns about military defence. Between 1882 and 1950 the British Parliament rejected ten Channel Tunnel bills, mostly for national security reasons. Tunnelling was revived in 1922 but soon abandoned again.

III

The Present Tunnel

The present tunnel is based on a scheme, projected to cost £112 million, drawn up in 1960 by the Channel Tunnel Study Group, an alliance of British and French companies, Technical Studies, Inc., of the United States, and the Suez Canal Company. In 1966 the British and French governments announced that rail tunnels would be bored, at a cost of £365 million. But the project fell victim to British political volatility in the early 1970s, and to concern about the £373-million cost of a rail link to London, which the state would need to provide. Work stopped in January 1975, after two access tunnels 740 m (2,430 ft) long had been dug.

In the 1980s the construction company Tarmac took over from RTZ as prime mover behind the project. In November 1984 the two governments decided to support a resumption and in April 1985 potential promoters were asked to submit schemes. Other proposals included a bridge, but in January 1986 the tunnel scheme of Transmanche Link (TML), designed by Mott Hay & Anderson, was selected. TML was a consortium of the British construction firms Tarmac, Wimpey, Costain, Balfour Beatty, and Taylor Woodrow (Translink Contractors), with the French firms Bouygues, Dumez, Spie Batignolles, SAE, and SGE (Transmanche Construction). In October 1987, Eurotunnel, the company created by TML and its banks, was floated on the stock market. Eurotunnel became the client and TML its contractor.

Construction of the tunnels began in September 1987. Boring machines drove from the French and British coasts, both inland towards the terminals and out to sea. The two sections of the service tunnel were the first to link up, breaking through in December 1990. The tunnelling companies were Graham Fagg of the United Kingdom and Philippe Cozette of France, and they achieved a tunnelling rate of 426 m (1,398 ft) in one week. A total of 7 million tonnes of spoil was removed. At the peak of activity, 15,000 construction workers were on site.

The tunnel was originally projected to cost £4.8 billion; its actual cost was £10.5 billion, provided by private funding. It officially opened on May 6, 1994, a year late, but teething troubles delayed full operation until December 1994.

As the century drew to a close, increasing numbers of asylum seekers making clandestine attempts to reach Britain via the tunnel posed a major problem for train operators. By the end of 2001 the train companies had begun restricting freight services in an attempt to reduce the opportunities for stowaways. The situation was aggravated by the close proximity of the tunnel entrance to Sangatte, which until late 2002 was an open Red Cross refugee centre on the outskirts of Calais.