Channel Tunnel

I

Introduction

Channel Tunnel, tunnel 50.4 km (32 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 trucks. 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 trucks.

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 and take three hours to travel between London and Paris.

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.

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Trial tunnelling started but soon stopped because of concerns about military defense. 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.

The present tunnel is based on a scheme 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, but the project fell victim to British political volatility in the early 1970s, and to concern about the high 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 tons of spoil was removed. At the peak of activity, 15,000 construction workers were on site.

The tunnel cost nearly $16 billion in United States dollars, more than twice the original cost estimates. It officially opened on May 6, 1994, a year late, but did not go into full operation until December 1994.

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