Channel Tunnel

The Channel Tunnel (French: le tunnel sous la Manche) is a 31 mile (50.5 km)-long rail tunnel beneath the English Channel at the Straits of Dover, connecting Folkestone, Kent in England to Coquelles near Calais in northern France. A long-standing and very expensive project that saw several false starts, it was finally completed in 1994. It is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world, surpassed only by the Seikan Tunnel in Japan, but the undersea section of 24 miles (39 km), is unsurpassed in the world. It is operated by Eurotunnel. Before and during construction it was widely known by the portmanteau nickname Chunnel, but today it is normally known simply as the Channel Tunnel.

Historical attempts or proposals for a tunnel

A link between Great Britain and mainland Europe had been proposed on many occasions.

1802 Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French engineer, put forward a proposal for a tunnel. Passengers would travel through the tunnel in horse-drawn coaches, the road would be lit by oil lamps and a mid-tunnel island would have provided a fresh-air respite for the horses. The cost would have been one million pounds (about £64.4 million in 2004 ^*).
1865 George Ward Hunt proposed the idea of a tunnel to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Ewart Gladstone. The Channel Tunnel.
1868 Lord Granville declared the support of the British Government for the proposed tunnel.
- Lord Granville entered into correspondence with France over the issue.
1875 Peter William Barlow, who had worked extensively on the world's first underground railway, suggested a floating steel tube across the Channel. The idea was rejected.
- French & British Parliamentary bills passed to build the tunnel. Insufficient funds raised and the concession ran out a year later.
1876 Extensive geological survey carried out; French sink two shafts.
1880 The South Eastern Railway (SER) arranges trial borings on the British side.
1881 Patented (Beaumont) boring machine drives a tunnel 897 yards (820 m) parallel to cliffs on the British side.
- Work begins by SER on Channel Tunnel; again insufficient funds. Submarine Continental Railway Company set up.
1882 Rival Channel Tunnel Company causes a rift in proceedings; adverse comments by media and an influential group (including Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson). Eventually work was halted by the Board of Trade because of military objections: the ease with which invaders could attack from the Continent was cited.
1922 Workers started boring a tunnel from below the chalk cliffs between Folkestone and Dover (now known as Samphire Hoe): after 400 feet (128 m) of tunnel had been completed, political objections again brought the project to an end.

It was not until the late twentieth century that engineers came to believe that the necessary technical ability was available. After World War II the concept of the tunnel began to receive serious attention.

Second tunnel

As of 2005, the British and French governments are investigating the possibility of a second tunnel through the Channel, as required in the original treaty, but the economic case for such a tunnel has not been made. The planning has not progressed past the feasibility stage. It is due to be built in 2010.

The current tunnel

The Channel Tunnel consists of three parallel tunnels. There are two rail tunnels, measuring 25 feet (7.6 m) in diameter and about 98 feet (30 m) apart, which carry trains north and south. In between the two rail tunnels is a service tunnel, measuring 16 feet (4.8 m) in diameter. The service tunnel, served by narrow rubber-tyred vehicles, is connected by cross-passages to the main tunnels at intervals of approximately 1,230 feet (375 m). It allows maintenance workers access to the rail tunnels and provides a safe route for escape during emergencies.

The two running tunnels are directly linked every 820 feet (250 m) by pressure relief ducts (PRDs) that pass over the top of the service tunnel and do not connect to it. The PRDs alleviate the piston effect of trains by allowing airflow from moving trains to pass into the other running tunnel.

Planning

In 1957 le Tunnel sous la Manche Study Group was formed. It reported in 1960 and recommended two main railway tunnels and a smaller service tunnel. The project was launched in 1973 but folded due to financial problems in 1975 after the construction of a 820 foot (250 m) test tunnel.

In 1984 the idea was relaunched with a joint British and French government request for proposals to build a privately-funded link. There were four proposals: two rail tunnels, a road tunnel and a bridge. Of the four submissions received, the one most closely resembling the 1973 plan was chosen, and announced on 20 January 1986. The Franco-British Channel Fixed Link Treaty was signed by the two governments in Canterbury, Kent on 12 February 1986 and ratified in 1987.

The planned route of the tunnel took it from Calais to Folkestone (a route rather longer than the shortest possible crossing) and the tunnel follows a single chalk stratum, which meant the tunnel was deeper than the previous attempt. For much of its route the tunnel is nearly 130 feet (40 m) under the seafloor, with the southern section being deeper than the northern.

Construction

Digging the tunnel took 15,000 workers over seven years, with tunnelling operations conducted simultaneously from both ends. The prime contractor for the construction was the Anglo-French TransManche Link (TML), a consortium of ten construction companies and five banks of the two countries. Engineers used large tunnel boring machines (TBMs, mobile excavation factories that combined drilling, material removal, and the process of shoring up the soft and permeable tunnel walls with a concrete lining).

In all, eleven TBMs were used on the Channel Tunnel:

three French TBMs driving from Sangatte to under the Channel,
one French TBM driving the service tunnel from Sangatte cofferdam to the French portal,
one French TBM driving one running tunnel from Sangatte cofferdam to the French portal, then the other running tunnel from the French portal back to Sangatte cofferdam,
three British TBMs driving from Shakespeare Cliff to the British portal,
three British TBMs driving from Shakespeare Cliff to under the Channel.

Construction on the service tunnel began on December 1, 1987 from both the UK and French shores, and on December 1, 1990 the service tunnels broke through at the halfway point. TML carefully staged the break through for maximum effect: TML tunnellers Phillipe Cozette and Graham Fagg cut a heading between the two drives under the watchful eye of the media.

The main rail tunnels met on May 22, 1991 and on June 28, 1991, each accompanied by a breakthrough ceremony. When each pair of TBMs met, the French TBM was dismantled while the British one was diverted into the rock, concreted in place, and abandoned.

The next few years were spent refining, equipping, and finishing the tunnels. In 1994 the Channel Tunnel was considered completed.

In the end, almost 5 million cubic yards (4 million m³) of chalk were excavated on the British side, much of which was dumped below Shakespeare Cliff near Folkestone to reclaim 90 acres (0.36 km²) of land from the sea. Called Samphire Hoe, the area is now a popular park. In all, 10.5 million cubic yards (8 million m³) of soil were removed, at an average rate of 2,400 tonnes/hour.

Completion

The British and French efforts, which had been guided by laser surveying methods, met first with the completion of the undersea service (access) tunnel. The difference in the centrelines of the two ends of the tunnel was surveyed as just 14.1 inches (358 mm) horizontally and 2.3 inches (58 mm) vertically. When the two ends of the undersea service tunnel met 130 feet (40 m) beneath the English Channel seabed on 1 December 1990 it became possible to walk on dry land from Great Britain to continental Europe for the first time since the end of the last ice age 8,500 years ago. The tunnel was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand in a ceremony held in Calais on 6 May 1994.

Statistics

The Channel Tunnel is 31 miles (50 km) long, of which 24 miles (39 km) are undersea. The average depth is 150 feet (45 m) underneath the seabed. It opened for business in late 1994, offering three principal services: a shuttle for vehicles, Eurostar passenger service linking London with Paris and Brussels, and through freight trains.

In 2004, 7,276,675 passengers travelled through the tunnel on Eurostar while in the same year Eurotunnel carried 2,101,323 cars, 1,281,207 trucks and 63,467 coaches on its shuttle trains.

Rail freight carried through the Channel Tunnel increased by 8% to 1,889,175 t in 2004.

A journey through the tunnel lasts about 20 minutes; from start to end a shuttle train journey totals about 35 minutes, including travelling a large loop to turn the train round. Eurostar trains travel considerably slower than their top speed while going through the tunnel, in part to fit in with the shuttle trains.

At completion, it was estimated that the whole project cost around £10 billion. The tunnel has been operating at a significant loss, and shares of the stock that funded the project lost 90% of their value between 1989 and 1998. The company announced a loss of £1.33 billion in 2003 and £570 million in 2004, and has been in constant negotiations with its creditors. In its defense, Eurotunnel cites a lack of use of the infrastructure, an inability to attract business because of high access charges, too much debt which causes a heavy interest payment burden, and a volume of both passenger and rail traffic 38% and 24%, respectively, of that which was forecast.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has declared the tunnel to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

Operation

The tunnel is operated by Eurotunnel (Eurotunnel plc in the UK, and Eurotunnel SA in France).

Four types of train services operate:

Eurostar high speed passenger trains. These connect London's Waterloo station (named after the Napoleonic battle between the UK and France) with the Gare du Nord station in Paris and Brussels Midi/Zuid station, with stops at Ashford, Calais-Frethun and Lille. Eurostar services will switch from Waterloo to St Pancras railway station when the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link railway line is completed between the tunnel and London in 2007.
Eurotunnel Shuttle passenger shuttle trains. These carry cars, coaches and vans between Sangatte (Calais/Coquelles) and Folkestone. Enclosed rail wagons, some double-deck, with minor amenities permit drive-on and drive-off operation; passengers stay with their vehicles. Formerly marketed as Le Shuttle.
Eurotunnel freight shuttle trains. These carry lorries on open rail wagons, with the lorry drivers travelling in a separate passenger coach.
Freight trains. These trains carry conventional rail freight or container loads between Europe and Great Britain.

Eurostar trains travel at high speeds in France and on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, where the tracks are modern and custom-made for the standard TGV cruising speed of 186 mph (300 km/h), and within the tunnel at up to 100 mph (160 km/h). The first section of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, between the tunnel & Ebbsfleet in North Kent, opened in 2003. Until the second section between Ebbsfleet and St Pancras opens in 2007 Eurostar trains use 'traditional' lines for the final part of the journey into Waterloo, running at much lower speeds.

There have been proposals for local passenger rail services linking Kent with towns in the Pas de Calais, along the lines of the local trains that run between Zealand and southern Sweden across the Oresund Bridge, but such a service remains unlikely.

Fire

The Channel Tunnel's only serious operational incident was a fire on 18 November 1996 aboard a shuttle train carrying trucks and trailers. No lives were lost, due in large part to the safety of the tunnel design and the response of safety crews from France and the UK. The tunnel suffered major structural damage over about a kilometre of length, and its safety procedures and emergency services liaison were substantially revised afterwards.

Sovereignty

As one of the first international rail tunnels, the Channel Tunnel required an inventive approach to border controls. The official border between France and the United Kingdom is a painted line roughly halfway through the tunnel (the UK side is somewhat longer). The British half is part of the District of Dover and the English county of Kent. As a practical matter border controls are handled at boarding or on the train. A detailed three-way treaty between the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium governs border controls, with the establishment of control zones wherein the officers of the other nation may exercise limited customs and law enforcement powers. For most purposes these are at either end of the tunnel; for certain city-to-city trains the train itself represents a control zone.

In an unusual move, the British and French governments agreed to provide immigration staff at opposite ends of the tunnel; thus the French immigration control posts are located in the United Kingdom, while the British ones are in France. This leads occasionally to unusual incidents, for example when a French police officer wandered into the non-international part of Waterloo station while carrying a firearm ^*. In the 1990s, the French authorities tried to arrest a French national working in the British terminal at Folkestone who had been evading French military service.

Asylum seekers

Asylum seekers have been known to use the tunnel to attempt to enter Britain. Before new security measures instituted in 2002, authorities estimated some 1,500 persons had got in this way. Most found some way to ride a freight train, but others simply walked. Increased surveillance and more law enforcement presence are seen as only a partial solution. ^*

Financial Trouble

Eurotunnel, the company that built and funded the project and currently runs the shuttle services, has been in financial difficulties almost from the start. Attempts at solving the problems have included cutting the number of trains per hour on a normal day from four to two, reducing staff and streamlining the business. These measures come under the umbrella of "Project DARE"

Appearances in film

Given its status as one of the 20th century's most significant feats of engineering, it is perhaps surprising that the Channel Tunnel has not become more of a cultural icon (although admittedly other "modern wonders of the world" such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building are more photogenic).

The Channel Tunnel features in the climax of the film Impossible (movie) (Brian De Palma, 1996), in which Tom Cruise, clinging on to a high-speed train, is chased by a helicopter into what is supposedly the Channel Tunnel. The largely CGI sequence contains many factual errors in addition to the physical impossibility of such a feat. In the film the tunnel is shown as a single rectangular twin-track tunnel, and the trains shown are standard French TGVs but without overhead wires. In reality the Channel Tunnel uses separate single-track tunnels for the two directions of travel, while SNCF passenger trains do not operate in the tunnel. The sequence showing the train approaching the tunnel was reportedly filmed in the Upper Nithsdale valley on the Kilmarnock to Dumfries section of the Glasgow South Western Line in Scotland.

Chunnel was also the name of a fictional movie in an episode of the popular US television series Seinfeld entitled "The Pool Guy". Chunnel was an action/disaster film which featured the Tunnel as its primary setting. Although it had a somewhat obscure plot involving murder and money, at one point everybody was ordered out of the Chunnel due to the threat of an explosion which occurred shortly thereafter. It was further revealed that the American First Daughter was also trapped in the Chunnel at the time of the explosion.

The Channel Tunnel was also featured in an episode of Megastructures on the National Geographic Channel.

External links

Information on both le shuttle and Eurostar
Eurotunnel
Channel Tunnel History
Channel Tunnel Facts - a selection of historical and geological facts about the tunnel
Channel Tunnel Fire - detailed technical summary of the emergency response
Engineering specifications
Another page with history of Channel Tunnel
A detailed report on the background, construction and financial history of the Channel Tunnel.
Google Maps aerial photo of Tunnel at Cheriton
BBC News archive report and video of tunnel breakthrough 1 December 1990
Amicale des batisseurs du tunnel sous la manche

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