The
Channel Tunnel is a 50.5 kilometres (31.4 mi) undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with
CoquellesCoquelles is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department near Calais in northern France.It is known informally as the town of the Channel Tunnel. The town comprises a shopping centre, hotels and farm in vieille Coquelles , part of the L'Européene autoroute and the Channel Tunnel terminal.The...
,
Pas-de-Calais near
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
in northern
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
beneath the
English ChannelThe English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
at the
Strait of DoverThe Strait of Dover or Dover Strait is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel. The shortest distance across the strait is from the South Foreland, 6 kilometres northeast of Dover in the county of Kent, England, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near to Calais in the French of...
. At its lowest point, it is 75 metres (246.1 ft) deep. At 37.9 kilometres (23.6 mi), the Channel Tunnel possesses the longest undersea portion of any tunnel in the world, although the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan is both longer overall at 53.85 kilometres (33.5 mi), and deeper at 240 metres (787.4 ft) below sea level.
The tunnel carries high-speed
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
passenger trains,
Eurotunnel ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
roll-on/roll-off vehicle transport—the largest in the world—and international rail
freight trainA freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars or goods wagons hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain...
s. The tunnel connects end-to-end with the
LGV NordThe LGV Nord is a French 333-kilometre long high speed rail line, opened in 1993, that connects Paris to the Belgian border and the Channel Tunnel via Lille....
and High Speed 1 high-speed railway lines. In 1996 the
American Society of Civil EngineersThe American Society of Civil Engineers is a professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. It is the oldest national engineering society in the United States. ASCE's vision is to have engineers positioned as global leaders who strive toward...
identified the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Ideas for a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802, but British political and press pressure over compromised national security stalled attempts to construct a tunnel. However, the eventual successful
projectA megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. Megaprojects are typically defined as costing more than US$1 billion and attracting a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets. Megaprojects can also be defined as "initiatives that...
, organised by
EurotunnelGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. manages and operates the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The Company operates the car shuttle services and earns revenue on other trains passing through the tunnel...
, began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994. The project came in 80% over its predicted budget. Since its construction, the tunnel has faced several problems. Fires have disrupted operation of the tunnel. Illegal immigrants and asylum seekers have attempted to use the tunnel to enter the UK, causing a minor diplomatic disagreement over the siting of the
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
refugee campA refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
, which was eventually closed in 2002.
Proposals and attempts
Key dates
| 1802 |
Albert Mathieu put forward a cross-Channel tunnel proposal. |
| 1875 |
The Channel Tunnel Company Ltd began preliminary trials |
| 1882 |
The Abbot's Cliff heading had reached 897 yards (820.2 m) and that at Shakespeare Cliff was 2040 yards (1,865.4 m) in length |
| January 1975 |
A UK–France government backed scheme that started in 1974 was cancelled |
| February 1986 |
The Treaty of Canterbury The Treaty of Canterbury was signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand on 12 February 1986, and is the original document providing for the existing undersea tunnel between the two countries. The treaty is significant and unusual because it is a...
was signed allowing the project to proceed |
| June 1988 |
First tunnelling commenced in France |
| December 1988 |
UK TBM A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
commenced operation |
| December 1990 |
The service tunnel broke through under the Channel |
| May 1994 |
The tunnel was formally opened by HM The QueenElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and President MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
|
| Mid 1994 |
Freight and passenger trains commenced operation |
| November 1996 |
A fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| November 2007 |
High Speed 1, linking London to the tunnel, opened |
| September 2008 |
Another fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| December 2009 |
Eurostar trains stranded in the tunnel due to melting snow affecting the trains' electrical hardware |
In 1802, French mining engineer Albert Mathieu put forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches, and an artificial island mid-Channel for changing horses.
In the 1830s, Frenchman
Aimé Thomé de GamondAimé Thomé de Gamond was a French eccentric engineer and entrepreneur who lived during the 19th century. He is called the "father of the tunnel between France and England"....
performed the first geological and hydrographical surveys on the Channel, between Calais and Dover. Thomé de Gamond explored several schemes and, in 1856, he presented a proposal to Napoleon III for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez to Eastwater Point with a port/airshaft on the Varne sandbank at a cost of 170 million
francThe franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
s, or less than £7 million.
In 1865, a deputation led by
George Ward HuntGeorge Ward Hunt was a British Conservative Party politician and statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1st and 2nd ministries of Benjamin Disraeli.-Background:...
proposed the idea of a tunnel to the
Chancellor of the ExchequerThe Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
of the day,
William Ewart GladstoneWilliam Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
.
After 1867,
William LowWilliam Low was a chain of supermarkets based in Dundee, Scotland, until it was bought out by Tesco for £257m in 1994....
and
Sir John Clarke HawkshawSir John Hawkshaw , was an English civil engineer.-Early life:He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire and was educated at Leeds Grammar School...
promoted ideas, but none were implemented. An official Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a cross-Channel railway tunnel. In 1881, British railway entrepreneur
Sir Edward WatkinSir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
and French
Suez CanalThe Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
contractor Alexandre Lavalley were in the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company that conducted exploratory work on both sides of the Channel. On the English side a 2.13 metres (7 ft) diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a 1893 metres (6,211 ft) pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff. On the French side, a similar machine dug 1669 m (5,475.7 ft) from
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns advocating that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project.
In 1919, during the
Paris Peace ConferenceThe Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
, British Prime Minister
David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend against another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously and nothing came of Lloyd George's proposal.
In 1929 there was another proposal for the building a channel tunnel, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Proponents estimated construction to be about US$150 million. The engineers addressed the concerns of both nations' military leaders by designing two sumps—one near the coast of each country—that could be flooded at will to block the tunnel. This design feature did not override the concerns of both nations' military leaders, and other concerns for hordes of undesirable tourists who would disrupt English habits of living.
In 1955, defence arguments were accepted to be irrelevant because of the dominance of air power; thus, both the British and French governments supported technical and geological surveys. A detailed geological survey was carried out in 1964–65. Construction work commenced on both sides of the Channel in 1974, a government-funded project using twin tunnels on either side of a service tunnel, with capability for car shuttle wagons. In January 1975, to the dismay of the French partners, the British government cancelled the project. The government had changed to the
Labour PartyThe Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and there was uncertainty about
EECThe European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
membership, cost estimates had ballooned to 200% and the national economy was troubled. By this time the British Priestly tunnel boring machine was ready and the Ministry of Transport was able to do a 300 m (984.3 ft) experimental drive. This short tunnel would however be reused as the starting and access point for tunnelling operations from the British side.
In 1979, the "Mouse-hole Project" was suggested when the Conservatives came to power in Britain. The concept was a single-track rail tunnel with a service tunnel, but without shuttle terminals. The British government took no interest in funding the project, but Prime Minister
Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
said she had no objection to a privately funded project. In 1981 British and French leaders Margaret Thatcher and
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
agreed to set up a working group to look into a privately funded project, and in April 1985 promoters were formally invited to submit scheme proposals. Four submissions were shortlisted:
- a rail proposal based on the 1975 scheme presented by Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M),
- Eurobridge: a 4.5 km (2.8 mi) span suspension bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. Outside Tibet and Bhutan, where the first examples of this type of bridge were built in the 15th century, this type of bridge dates from the early 19th century...
with a roadway in an enclosed tube
- Euroroute: a 21 km (13 mi) tunnel between artificial islands approached by bridges, and
- Channel Expressway: large diameter road tunnels with mid-channel ventilation towers.
The cross-Channel ferry industry protested under the name "Flexilink". In 1975 there was no campaign protesting against a fixed link, with one of the largest ferry operators (Sealink) being state-owned. Flexilink continued rousing opposition throughout 1986 and 1987. Public opinion strongly favoured a drive-through tunnel, but ventilation issues, concerns about accident management, and fear of driver mesmerisation led to the only shortlisted rail submission, CTG/F-M, being awarded the project.
Arrangement
The British
Channel Tunnel Group consisted of two banks and five construction companies, while their French counterparts,
France–Manche, consisted of three banks and five construction companies. The role of the banks was to advise on financing and secure loan commitments. On 2 July 1985, the groups formed Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M). Their submission to the British and French governments was drawn from the 1975 project, including 11 volumes and a substantial environmental impact statement.
The design and construction was done by the ten construction companies in the CTG/F-M group. The French terminal and boring from Sangatte was undertaken by the five French construction companies in the joint venture group
GIE Transmanche Construction. The English Terminal and boring from Shakespeare Cliff was undertaken by the five British construction companies in the
Trankslink Joint Venture. The two partnerships were linked by
TransManche LinkTransManche Link or TML was a British-French construction consortium responsible for building the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel between Cheriton in Kent, United Kingdom, and Sangatte in France.-History:...
(TML), a bi-national project organisation. The Maître d'Oeuvre was a supervisory engineering body employed by Eurotunnel under the terms of the concession that monitored project activity and reported back to the governments and banks.
In France, with its long tradition of infrastructure investment, the project garnered widespread approval and in April the French National Assembly gave unanimous support and, in June 1987, after a public inquiry, the Senate gave unanimous support. In Britain, select committees examined the proposal, making history by holding hearings outside of Westminster, in Kent. In February 1987, the third reading of the Channel Tunnel Bill took place in the House of Commons, and was carried by 94 votes to 22. The
Channel Tunnel ActThe Channel Tunnel Act 1987 c.53 is an Act of Parliament which authorised the construction of the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France in accordance with a treaty signed in 1986. Section 2 of the Act forbade any public subsidy of the project....
gained
Royal assentThe granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...
and passed into English law in July of that year. Parliamentary support for the project came partly from provincial members of Parliament on the basis of promises of
regional EurostarRegional Eurostar was the name given to plans to operate Eurostar train services from Paris and Brussels to locations in the United Kingdom beyond London...
through train services that have never materialised; the promises were repeated in 1996 when the contract for construction of the
Channel Tunnel Rail LinkHigh Speed 1 , officially known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and originally as the Continental Main Line , is a high-speed railway line running from London through Kent to the British end of the Channel Tunnel.The line was built to carry international passenger traffic from the United Kingdom...
was awarded.
The Channel Tunnel is a build-own-operate-transfer (
BOOTA boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
) project with a concession. TML would design and build the tunnel, but financing was through a separate legal entity: Eurotunnel. Eurotunnel absorbed CTG/F-M and signed a construction contract with TML; however, the British and French governments controlled final engineering and safety decisions, which are now in the hands of the
Channel Tunnel Safety AuthorityThe Channel Tunnel Safety Authority is an international regulatory body responsible for safety in the Channel Tunnel.The CTSA was established by the Treaty of Canterbury...
. The British and French governments gave Eurotunnel a 55- (later 65-) year operating concession to repay loans and pay dividends. A Railway Usage Agreement was signed between Eurotunnel,
British RailBritish Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
and the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français guaranteeing future revenue in exchange for the railways obtaining half of the tunnel's capacity.
Private funding for such a complex infrastructure project was of unprecedented scale. An initial equity of £45 million was raised by CTG/F-M, increased by £206 million private institutional placement, £770 million was raised in a public share offer that included press and television advertisements, a syndicated bank loan and
letter of creditA standard, commercial letter of credit is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking....
arranged £5 billion. Privately financed, the total investment costs at 1985 prices were £2600 million. At the 1994 completion actual costs were, in 1985 prices, £4650 million: an 80%
cost overrunA cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, is an unexpected cost incurred in excess of a budgeted amount due to an under-estimation of the actual cost during budgeting...
. The cost overrun was partly due to enhanced safety, security, and environmental demands. Financing costs were 140% higher than forecast.
Construction
Working from both the English side and the French side of the Channel, eleven
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s cut through chalk
marlMarl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...
to construct two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. The vehicle shuttle terminals are at
CheritonCheriton is a northern suburb of Folkestone in Kent that is the location of the English terminal of the Channel Tunnel. It is the location of the major army barracks of Shorncliffe Camp.- History :...
(part of
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
) and Coquelles, and are connected to the English and French motorways (
M20The M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It runs from the M25 motorway to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long...
and A16 respectively).
Tunnelling commenced in 1988, and the tunnel began operating in 1994. In 1985 prices, the total construction cost was
£The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
4.650 billion (equivalent to £ billion today), an 80% cost overrun. At the peak of construction 15,000 people were employed with daily expenditure over £3 million. Ten workers, eight of them British, were killed during construction between 1987 and 1993, most in the first few months of boring.
Completion
A small, two-inch (50-mm) diameter pilot hole allowed the service tunnel to break through without ceremony on 30 October 1990. On 1 December 1990, Englishman Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel with the media watching. Eurotunnel completed the tunnel on time, and the tunnel was officially opened one year later than originally planned by British
Queen Elizabeth IIElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and French President
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
in a ceremony held in
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
on 6 May 1994. The Queen travelled through the tunnel to Calais on a
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
train, which stopped nose to nose with the train that carried President Mitterrand from Paris. Following the ceremony President Mitterrand and the Queen travelled on
Le ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
to a similar ceremony in
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
. A full public service did not start for several months.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now called High Speed 1, runs 69 miles (111 km) from
St Pancras railway stationSt Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
in London to the Channel Tunnel portal at Folkestone in Kent. It cost £5.8 billion. On 16 September 2003 UK Prime Minister
Tony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
opened the first section of High Speed 1, from Folkestone to north Kent. On 6 November 2007 the Queen officially opened High Speed 1 and St Pancras International station, replacing the original slower link to
Waterloo International railway stationWaterloo International station was the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening on 14 November 1994 until 13 November 2007. It stands on the western side of Waterloo railway station, London...
. On High Speed 1 trains travelling at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph), the journey from London to Paris takes 2 hours 15 minutes and London to Brussels takes 1 hour 51 minutes.
In 1996, the American Society of Civil Engineers, with
Popular MechanicsPopular Mechanics is an American magazine first published January 11, 1902 by H. H. Windsor, and has been owned since 1958 by the Hearst Corporation...
, selected the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Engineering
Surveying undertaken in the twenty years before tunnel construction confirmed earlier speculations that a tunnel route could be bored through a chalk marl stratum. The chalk marl was conducive to tunnelling, with impermeability, ease of excavation and strength. While on the English side the chalk marl ran along the entire length of the tunnel, on the French side a length of 5 kilometres (3 mi) had variable and difficult geology. The Channel Tunnel consists of three bores: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length with a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel in between. There are also cross-passages and piston relief ducts. The service tunnel was used as a pilot tunnel, boring ahead of the main tunnels to determine the conditions. English access was provided at Shakespeare Cliff, while French access came from a shaft at Sangatte. The French side used five
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s (TBMs); the English side used six. The service tunnel uses Service Tunnel Transport System (STTS) and Light Service Tunnel Vehicles (LADOGS). Fire safety was a critical design issue.
Between the portals at Beussingue and Castle Hill the tunnel is 50.5 kilometres (31 mi) long, with 3.3 kilometres (2 mi) under land on the French side, 9.3 kilometres (6 mi) under land on the UK side and 37.9 kilometres (24 mi) under sea. This makes the Channel Tunnel the second longest rail tunnel in the world, behind the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan, but with the longest under-sea section. The average depth is 45 metres (148 ft) below the seabed. On the UK side, of the expected 5000000 cubic metre of spoil approximately 1000000 cubic metre was used for fill at the terminal site, and the remainder was deposited at Lower Shakespeare Cliff behind a seawall,
reclaimingLand reclamation, usually known as reclamation, is the process to create new land from sea or riverbeds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or landfill.- Habitation :...
74 acres (30 ha) of land. This land was then made into the
Samphire Hoe Country ParkSamphire Hoe Country Park is a country park situated 3 kilometres west of Dover in southeast England. The park was created by using 4.9 million cubic metres of chalk marl from the Channel Tunnel excavations and is found at the bottom of a section of the White Cliffs of Dover...
. Environmental impact assessment did not identify any major risks for the project, and further studies into safety, noise, and air pollution were overall positive. However, environmental objections were raised over a high-speed link to London.
Geology
Successful tunnelling under the channel required a sound understanding of the topography and geology and the selection of the best rock strata through which to tunnel. The geology generally consists of northeasterly dipping Cretaceous strata, part of the northern limb of the Wealden-Boulonnais dome. Characteristics include:
- Continuous chalk on the cliffs on either side of the Channel containing no major faulting, as observed by Verstegan in 1698
- Four geological strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
, marine sediments laid down 90–100 million years ago; pervious upper and middle chalk above slightly pervious lower chalk and finally impermeable Gault ClayGault is a clay formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period...
. A sandy stratum, glauconitic marl (tortia), is in between the chalk marl and gault clay
- A 25 – layer of chalk marl (French: craie bleue) in the lower third of the lower chalk appeared to present the best tunnelling medium. The chalk has a clay content of 30–40% providing impermeability to groundwater yet relatively easy excavation with strength allowing minimal support. Ideally the tunnel would be bored in the bottom 15 metres (49 ft) of the chalk marl, allowing water inflow from fractures and joints to be minimised, but above the gault clay that would increase stress on the tunnel lining and swell and soften when wet.
On the English side of the channel, the strata
dipStrike and dip refer to the orientation or attitude of a geologic feature. The strike line of a bed, fault, or other planar feature is a line representing the intersection of that feature with a horizontal plane. On a geologic map, this is represented with a short straight line segment oriented...
less than 5°, however, on the French side, this increases to 20°. Jointing and faulting is present on both the English and French sides. On the English side, only minor faults of displacement less than 2 metres (7 ft) exist. On the French side, displacements of up to 15 metres (49 ft) are present owing to the Quenocs
anticlinalIn structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. The term is not to be confused with antiform, which is a purely descriptive term for any fold that is convex up. Therefore if age relationships In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is...
foldThe term fold is used in geology when one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, are bent or curved as a result of permanent deformation. Synsedimentary folds are those due to slumping of sedimentary material before it is lithified. Folds in rocks vary in...
. The faults are of limited width, filled with calcite, pyrite and remoulded clay. The increased dip and faulting restricted the selection of route on the French side. To avoid confusion, microfossil assemblages were used to classify the chalk marl. On the French side, particularly near the coast, the chalk was harder, and more brittle, and more fractured than on the English side. This led to the adoption of different tunnelling techniques on the French and English sides.
The Quaternary undersea valley Fosse Dangaered, and Castle Hill landslip, located at the English portal, caused concerns. Identified by the 1964–65 geophysical survey, the Fosse Dangaered is an infilled valley system extending 80 metres (262 ft) below the seabed, 500 metres (1,640 ft) south of the tunnel route, located mid-channel. A 1986 survey showed that a tributary crossed the path of the tunnel, and so the tunnel route was made as far north and deep as possible. The English terminal had to be located in the Castle Hill landslip, which consists of displaced and tipping blocks of lower chalk, glauconitic marl and gault debris. Thus the area was stabilised by buttressing and inserting drainage adits. The service tunnels were pilot tunnels preceding the main tunnels, so that the geology, areas of crushed rock, and zones of high water inflow could be predicted. Exploratory probing took place in the service tunnels, in the form of extensive forward probing, vertical downward probes and sideways probing.
Surveying
Marine soundings and samplings by Thomé de Gamond were carried out during 1833–1867, establishing the seabed depth at a maximum of 55 metres (180.4 ft) and the continuity of geological strata (layers). Surveying continued over many years, with 166 marine and 70 land-deep boreholes being drilled and over 4,000-line-kilometres of marine geophysical survey completed. Surveys were undertaken in 1958–1959, 1964–1965, 1972–1974 and 1986–1988.
The surveying in 1958–1959 catered for
immersed tubeAn immersed tube is a kind of underwater tunnel composed of segments, constructed elsewhere and floated to the tunnel site to be sunk into place and then linked together. They are commonly used for road and rail crossings of rivers, estuaries and sea channels/harbours...
and bridge designs as well as a bored tunnel, and thus a wide area was investigated. At this time marine geophysics surveying for engineering projects was in its infancy, with poor positioning and resolution from seismic profiling. The 1964–1965 surveys concentrated on a northerly route that left the English coast at Dover harbour; using 70 boreholes, an area of deeply weathered rock with high permeability was located just south of Dover harbour.
Given the previous survey results and access constraints, a more southerly route was investigated in the 1972–1973 survey and the route was confirmed to be feasible. Information for the tunnelling project also came from work before the 1975 cancellation. On the French side at Sangatte a deep shaft with
aditAn adit is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, and ventilated.-Construction:...
s was made. On the English side at Shakespeare Cliff, the government allowed 250 metres (820 ft) of 4.5 metres (15 ft) diameter tunnel to be driven. The actual tunnel alignment, method of excavation and support were essentially the same as the 1975 attempt. In the 1986–1997 survey, previous findings were reinforced and the nature of the gault clay and the tunnelling medium (chalk marl that made up 85% of the route) were investigated. Geophysical techniques from the oil industry were employed.
Tunnelling
Tunnelling between England and France was a major engineering challenge, with the only precedent being the undersea
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan. A serious risk with underwater tunnels is major water inflow due to the water pressure from the sea above under weak ground conditions. The Channel Tunnel also had the challenge of time—being privately funded, early financial return was paramount.
The objective was to construct: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length; a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel between the two main tunnels; pairs of 3.3 metres (11 ft) diameter cross-passages linking the rail tunnels to the service tunnel at 375 metres (1,230 ft) spacing; piston relief ducts 2 metres (7 ft) diameter connecting the rail tunnels at 250 metres (820 ft) spacing; two undersea crossover caverns to connect the rail tunnels. The service tunnel always preceded the main tunnels by at least 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) to ascertain the ground conditions. There was plenty of experience with tunnelling through chalk in the mining industry. The undersea crossover caverns were a complex engineering problem. The French cavern was based on the
Mount Baker RidgeThe Mount Baker Tunnel or Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel carries Interstate 90 under the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is actually a group of four tunnels that carry eight lanes of freeway traffic, plus a separate tunnel for bicycles and pedestrians. The two originals are twin...
freeway tunnel in the US. The UK cavern was dug from the service tunnel ahead of the main tunnels to avoid delay.
Precast segmental linings in the main TBM drives were used, but different solutions were used on the English and French sides. On the French side, neoprene and grout sealed bolted linings made of cast iron or high-strength reinforced concrete were used. On the English side, the main requirement was for speed and bolting of cast-iron lining segments was only carried out in areas of poor geology. In the UK rail tunnels, eight lining segments plus a key segment were used; on the French side, five segments plus a key segment. On the French side, a 55 metres (180 ft) diameter 75 metres (246 ft) deep grout-curtained shaft at Sangatte was used for access. On the English side, a marshalling area was 140 metres (459 ft) below the top of Shakespeare Cliff, and the
New Austrian Tunnelling methodThe New Austrian Tunnelling method was developed between 1957 and 1965 in Austria. It was given its name in Salzburg in 1962 to distinguish it from old Austrian tunnelling approach. The main contributors to the development of NATM were Ladislaus von Rabcewicz, Leopold Müller and Franz Pacher...
(NATM) was first applied in the chalk marl here. On the English side, the land tunnels were driven from Shakespeare Cliff, the same place as the marine tunnels, not from Folkestone. The platform at the base of the cliff was not large enough for all of the drives and, despite environmental objections, tunnel spoil was placed behind a reinforced concrete seawall, on condition of placing the chalk in an enclosed lagoon to avoid wide dispersal of chalk fines. Owing to limited space, the precast lining factory was on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary.
On the French side, owing to the greater permeability to water, earth pressure balance TBMs with open and closed modes were used. The TBMs were of a closed nature during the initial 5 kilometres (3 mi), but then operated as open, boring through the chalk marl stratum. This minimised the impact to the ground and allowed high water pressures to be withstood, and it also alleviated the need to grout ahead of the tunnel. The French effort required five TBMs: two main marine machines, one main land machine (the short land drives of 3 km allowed one TBM to complete the first drive then reverse direction and complete the other), and two service tunnel machines. On the English side, the simpler geology allowed faster open-faced TBMs. Six machines were used, all commenced digging from Shakespeare Cliff, three marine-bound and three for the land tunnels. Towards the completion of the undersea drives, the UK TBMs were driven steeply downwards and buried clear of the tunnel. The French TBMs then completed the tunnel and were dismantled. A 900 mm gauge railway was used on the English side during construction.
In contrast to the English machines, which were simply given alphanumeric names, the French tunnelling machines were all named after women: Brigitte, Europa, Catherine, Virginie, Pascaline, Séverine.
Railway design
Communications
There are three communication systems in the tunnel: concession radio (CR) for mobile vehicles and personnel within Eurotunnel's Concession (terminals, tunnels, coastal shafts); track-to-train radio (TTR) for secure speech and data between trains and the railway control centre; Shuttle internal radio (SIR) for communication between shuttle crew and to passengers over car radios. This service was discontinued within one year of opening because of drivers difficulty setting their radios to the correct frequency (88.8 MHz).
Power supply
All tunnel services run on electricity, shared equally from English and French sources. Power is delivered to the locomotives via an overhead line (catenary) at
The
Channel Tunnel ({{lang-fr|Le tunnel sous la Manche}}; also referred to as the
Chunnel) is a 50.5 kilometres (31.4 mi) undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with
CoquellesCoquelles is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department near Calais in northern France.It is known informally as the town of the Channel Tunnel. The town comprises a shopping centre, hotels and farm in vieille Coquelles , part of the L'Européene autoroute and the Channel Tunnel terminal.The...
,
Pas-de-Calais near
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
in northern
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
beneath the
English ChannelThe English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
at the
Strait of DoverThe Strait of Dover or Dover Strait is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel. The shortest distance across the strait is from the South Foreland, 6 kilometres northeast of Dover in the county of Kent, England, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near to Calais in the French of...
. At its lowest point, it is 75 metres (246.1 ft) deep. At 37.9 kilometres (23.6 mi), the Channel Tunnel possesses the longest undersea portion of any tunnel in the world, although the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan is both longer overall at 53.85 kilometres (33.5 mi), and deeper at 240 metres (787.4 ft) below sea level.
The tunnel carries high-speed
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
passenger trains,
Eurotunnel ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
roll-on/roll-off vehicle transport—the largest in the world—and international rail
freight trainA freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars or goods wagons hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain...
s. The tunnel connects end-to-end with the
LGV NordThe LGV Nord is a French 333-kilometre long high speed rail line, opened in 1993, that connects Paris to the Belgian border and the Channel Tunnel via Lille....
and High Speed 1 high-speed railway lines. In 1996 the
American Society of Civil EngineersThe American Society of Civil Engineers is a professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. It is the oldest national engineering society in the United States. ASCE's vision is to have engineers positioned as global leaders who strive toward...
identified the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Ideas for a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802, but British political and press pressure over compromised national security stalled attempts to construct a tunnel. However, the eventual successful
projectA megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. Megaprojects are typically defined as costing more than US$1 billion and attracting a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets. Megaprojects can also be defined as "initiatives that...
, organised by
EurotunnelGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. manages and operates the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The Company operates the car shuttle services and earns revenue on other trains passing through the tunnel...
, began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994. The project came in 80% over its predicted budget. Since its construction, the tunnel has faced several problems. Fires have disrupted operation of the tunnel. Illegal immigrants and asylum seekers have attempted to use the tunnel to enter the UK, causing a minor diplomatic disagreement over the siting of the
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
refugee campA refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
, which was eventually closed in 2002.
Proposals and attempts
Key dates
| 1802 |
Albert Mathieu put forward a cross-Channel tunnel proposal. |
| 1875 |
The Channel Tunnel Company Ltd began preliminary trials |
| 1882 |
The Abbot's Cliff heading had reached 897 yards (820.2 m) and that at Shakespeare Cliff was 2040 yards (1,865.4 m) in length |
| January 1975 |
A UK–France government backed scheme that started in 1974 was cancelled |
| February 1986 |
The Treaty of Canterbury The Treaty of Canterbury was signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand on 12 February 1986, and is the original document providing for the existing undersea tunnel between the two countries. The treaty is significant and unusual because it is a...
was signed allowing the project to proceed |
| June 1988 |
First tunnelling commenced in France |
| December 1988 |
UK TBM A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
commenced operation |
| December 1990 |
The service tunnel broke through under the Channel |
| May 1994 |
The tunnel was formally opened by HM The QueenElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and President MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
|
| Mid 1994 |
Freight and passenger trains commenced operation |
| November 1996 |
A fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| November 2007 |
High Speed 1, linking London to the tunnel, opened |
| September 2008 |
Another fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| December 2009 |
Eurostar trains stranded in the tunnel due to melting snow affecting the trains' electrical hardware |
In 1802, French mining engineer Albert Mathieu put forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches, and an artificial island mid-Channel for changing horses.
In the 1830s, Frenchman
Aimé Thomé de GamondAimé Thomé de Gamond was a French eccentric engineer and entrepreneur who lived during the 19th century. He is called the "father of the tunnel between France and England"....
performed the first geological and hydrographical surveys on the Channel, between Calais and Dover. Thomé de Gamond explored several schemes and, in 1856, he presented a proposal to Napoleon III for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez to Eastwater Point with a port/airshaft on the Varne sandbank at a cost of 170 million
francThe franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
s, or less than £7 million.
In 1865, a deputation led by
George Ward HuntGeorge Ward Hunt was a British Conservative Party politician and statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1st and 2nd ministries of Benjamin Disraeli.-Background:...
proposed the idea of a tunnel to the
Chancellor of the ExchequerThe Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
of the day,
William Ewart GladstoneWilliam Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
.
After 1867,
William LowWilliam Low was a chain of supermarkets based in Dundee, Scotland, until it was bought out by Tesco for £257m in 1994....
and
Sir John Clarke HawkshawSir John Hawkshaw , was an English civil engineer.-Early life:He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire and was educated at Leeds Grammar School...
promoted ideas, but none were implemented. An official Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a cross-Channel railway tunnel. In 1881, British railway entrepreneur
Sir Edward WatkinSir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
and French
Suez CanalThe Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
contractor Alexandre Lavalley were in the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company that conducted exploratory work on both sides of the Channel. On the English side a 2.13 metres (7 ft) diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a 1893 metres (6,211 ft) pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff. On the French side, a similar machine dug 1669 m (5,475.7 ft) from
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns advocating that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project.
In 1919, during the
Paris Peace ConferenceThe Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
, British Prime Minister
David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend against another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously and nothing came of Lloyd George's proposal.
In 1929 there was another proposal for the building a channel tunnel, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Proponents estimated construction to be about US$150 million. The engineers addressed the concerns of both nations' military leaders by designing two sumps—one near the coast of each country—that could be flooded at will to block the tunnel. This design feature did not override the concerns of both nations' military leaders, and other concerns for hordes of undesirable tourists who would disrupt English habits of living.
In 1955, defence arguments were accepted to be irrelevant because of the dominance of air power; thus, both the British and French governments supported technical and geological surveys. A detailed geological survey was carried out in 1964–65. Construction work commenced on both sides of the Channel in 1974, a government-funded project using twin tunnels on either side of a service tunnel, with capability for car shuttle wagons. In January 1975, to the dismay of the French partners, the British government cancelled the project. The government had changed to the
Labour PartyThe Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and there was uncertainty about
EECThe European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
membership, cost estimates had ballooned to 200% and the national economy was troubled. By this time the British Priestly tunnel boring machine was ready and the Ministry of Transport was able to do a 300 m (984.3 ft) experimental drive. This short tunnel would however be reused as the starting and access point for tunnelling operations from the British side.
In 1979, the "Mouse-hole Project" was suggested when the Conservatives came to power in Britain. The concept was a single-track rail tunnel with a service tunnel, but without shuttle terminals. The British government took no interest in funding the project, but Prime Minister
Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
said she had no objection to a privately funded project. In 1981 British and French leaders Margaret Thatcher and
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
agreed to set up a working group to look into a privately funded project, and in April 1985 promoters were formally invited to submit scheme proposals. Four submissions were shortlisted:
- a rail proposal based on the 1975 scheme presented by Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M),
- Eurobridge: a 4.5 km (2.8 mi) span suspension bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. Outside Tibet and Bhutan, where the first examples of this type of bridge were built in the 15th century, this type of bridge dates from the early 19th century...
with a roadway in an enclosed tube
- Euroroute: a 21 km (13 mi) tunnel between artificial islands approached by bridges, and
- Channel Expressway: large diameter road tunnels with mid-channel ventilation towers.
The cross-Channel ferry industry protested under the name "Flexilink". In 1975 there was no campaign protesting against a fixed link, with one of the largest ferry operators (Sealink) being state-owned. Flexilink continued rousing opposition throughout 1986 and 1987. Public opinion strongly favoured a drive-through tunnel, but ventilation issues, concerns about accident management, and fear of driver mesmerisation led to the only shortlisted rail submission, CTG/F-M, being awarded the project.
Arrangement
The British
Channel Tunnel Group consisted of two banks and five construction companies, while their French counterparts,
France–Manche, consisted of three banks and five construction companies. The role of the banks was to advise on financing and secure loan commitments. On 2 July 1985, the groups formed Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M). Their submission to the British and French governments was drawn from the 1975 project, including 11 volumes and a substantial environmental impact statement.
The design and construction was done by the ten construction companies in the CTG/F-M group. The French terminal and boring from Sangatte was undertaken by the five French construction companies in the joint venture group
GIE Transmanche Construction. The English Terminal and boring from Shakespeare Cliff was undertaken by the five British construction companies in the
Trankslink Joint Venture. The two partnerships were linked by
TransManche LinkTransManche Link or TML was a British-French construction consortium responsible for building the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel between Cheriton in Kent, United Kingdom, and Sangatte in France.-History:...
(TML), a bi-national project organisation. The Maître d'Oeuvre was a supervisory engineering body employed by Eurotunnel under the terms of the concession that monitored project activity and reported back to the governments and banks.
In France, with its long tradition of infrastructure investment, the project garnered widespread approval and in April the French National Assembly gave unanimous support and, in June 1987, after a public inquiry, the Senate gave unanimous support. In Britain, select committees examined the proposal, making history by holding hearings outside of Westminster, in Kent. In February 1987, the third reading of the Channel Tunnel Bill took place in the House of Commons, and was carried by 94 votes to 22. The
Channel Tunnel ActThe Channel Tunnel Act 1987 c.53 is an Act of Parliament which authorised the construction of the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France in accordance with a treaty signed in 1986. Section 2 of the Act forbade any public subsidy of the project....
gained
Royal assentThe granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...
and passed into English law in July of that year. Parliamentary support for the project came partly from provincial members of Parliament on the basis of promises of
regional EurostarRegional Eurostar was the name given to plans to operate Eurostar train services from Paris and Brussels to locations in the United Kingdom beyond London...
through train services that have never materialised; the promises were repeated in 1996 when the contract for construction of the
Channel Tunnel Rail LinkHigh Speed 1 , officially known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and originally as the Continental Main Line , is a high-speed railway line running from London through Kent to the British end of the Channel Tunnel.The line was built to carry international passenger traffic from the United Kingdom...
was awarded.
The Channel Tunnel is a build-own-operate-transfer (
BOOTA boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
) project with a concession. TML would design and build the tunnel, but financing was through a separate legal entity: Eurotunnel. Eurotunnel absorbed CTG/F-M and signed a construction contract with TML; however, the British and French governments controlled final engineering and safety decisions, which are now in the hands of the
Channel Tunnel Safety AuthorityThe Channel Tunnel Safety Authority is an international regulatory body responsible for safety in the Channel Tunnel.The CTSA was established by the Treaty of Canterbury...
. The British and French governments gave Eurotunnel a 55- (later 65-) year operating concession to repay loans and pay dividends. A Railway Usage Agreement was signed between Eurotunnel,
British RailBritish Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
and the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français guaranteeing future revenue in exchange for the railways obtaining half of the tunnel's capacity.
Private funding for such a complex infrastructure project was of unprecedented scale. An initial equity of £45 million was raised by CTG/F-M, increased by £206 million private institutional placement, £770 million was raised in a public share offer that included press and television advertisements, a syndicated bank loan and
letter of creditA standard, commercial letter of credit is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking....
arranged £5 billion. Privately financed, the total investment costs at 1985 prices were £2600 million. At the 1994 completion actual costs were, in 1985 prices, £4650 million: an 80%
cost overrunA cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, is an unexpected cost incurred in excess of a budgeted amount due to an under-estimation of the actual cost during budgeting...
. The cost overrun was partly due to enhanced safety, security, and environmental demands. Financing costs were 140% higher than forecast.
Construction
Working from both the English side and the French side of the Channel, eleven
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s cut through chalk
marlMarl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...
to construct two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. The vehicle shuttle terminals are at
CheritonCheriton is a northern suburb of Folkestone in Kent that is the location of the English terminal of the Channel Tunnel. It is the location of the major army barracks of Shorncliffe Camp.- History :...
(part of
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
) and Coquelles, and are connected to the English and French motorways (
M20The M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It runs from the M25 motorway to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long...
and A16 respectively).
Tunnelling commenced in 1988, and the tunnel began operating in 1994. In 1985 prices, the total construction cost was
£The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
4.650 billion (equivalent to £{{Inflation|UK|4.65|1985}} billion today), an 80% cost overrun. At the peak of construction 15,000 people were employed with daily expenditure over £3 million. Ten workers, eight of them British, were killed during construction between 1987 and 1993, most in the first few months of boring.
Completion
A small, two-inch (50-mm) diameter pilot hole allowed the service tunnel to break through without ceremony on 30 October 1990. On 1 December 1990, Englishman Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel with the media watching. Eurotunnel completed the tunnel on time, and the tunnel was officially opened one year later than originally planned by British
Queen Elizabeth IIElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and French President
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
in a ceremony held in
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
on 6 May 1994. The Queen travelled through the tunnel to Calais on a
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
train, which stopped nose to nose with the train that carried President Mitterrand from Paris. Following the ceremony President Mitterrand and the Queen travelled on
Le ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
to a similar ceremony in
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
. A full public service did not start for several months.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now called High Speed 1, runs 69 miles (111 km) from
St Pancras railway stationSt Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
in London to the Channel Tunnel portal at Folkestone in Kent. It cost £5.8 billion. On 16 September 2003 UK Prime Minister
Tony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
opened the first section of High Speed 1, from Folkestone to north Kent. On 6 November 2007 the Queen officially opened High Speed 1 and St Pancras International station, replacing the original slower link to
Waterloo International railway stationWaterloo International station was the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening on 14 November 1994 until 13 November 2007. It stands on the western side of Waterloo railway station, London...
. On High Speed 1 trains travelling at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph), the journey from London to Paris takes 2 hours 15 minutes and London to Brussels takes 1 hour 51 minutes.
In 1996, the American Society of Civil Engineers, with
Popular MechanicsPopular Mechanics is an American magazine first published January 11, 1902 by H. H. Windsor, and has been owned since 1958 by the Hearst Corporation...
, selected the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Engineering
Surveying undertaken in the twenty years before tunnel construction confirmed earlier speculations that a tunnel route could be bored through a chalk marl stratum. The chalk marl was conducive to tunnelling, with impermeability, ease of excavation and strength. While on the English side the chalk marl ran along the entire length of the tunnel, on the French side a length of 5 kilometres (3 mi) had variable and difficult geology. The Channel Tunnel consists of three bores: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length with a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel in between. There are also cross-passages and piston relief ducts. The service tunnel was used as a pilot tunnel, boring ahead of the main tunnels to determine the conditions. English access was provided at Shakespeare Cliff, while French access came from a shaft at Sangatte. The French side used five
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s (TBMs); the English side used six. The service tunnel uses Service Tunnel Transport System (STTS) and Light Service Tunnel Vehicles (LADOGS). Fire safety was a critical design issue.
Between the portals at Beussingue and Castle Hill the tunnel is 50.5 kilometres (31 mi) long, with 3.3 kilometres (2 mi) under land on the French side, 9.3 kilometres (6 mi) under land on the UK side and 37.9 kilometres (24 mi) under sea. This makes the Channel Tunnel the second longest rail tunnel in the world, behind the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan, but with the longest under-sea section. The average depth is 45 metres (148 ft) below the seabed. On the UK side, of the expected 5000000 cubic metre of spoil approximately 1000000 cubic metre was used for fill at the terminal site, and the remainder was deposited at Lower Shakespeare Cliff behind a seawall,
reclaimingLand reclamation, usually known as reclamation, is the process to create new land from sea or riverbeds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or landfill.- Habitation :...
74 acres (30 ha) of land. This land was then made into the
Samphire Hoe Country ParkSamphire Hoe Country Park is a country park situated 3 kilometres west of Dover in southeast England. The park was created by using 4.9 million cubic metres of chalk marl from the Channel Tunnel excavations and is found at the bottom of a section of the White Cliffs of Dover...
. Environmental impact assessment did not identify any major risks for the project, and further studies into safety, noise, and air pollution were overall positive. However, environmental objections were raised over a high-speed link to London.
Geology
Successful tunnelling under the channel required a sound understanding of the topography and geology and the selection of the best rock strata through which to tunnel. The geology generally consists of northeasterly dipping Cretaceous strata, part of the northern limb of the Wealden-Boulonnais dome. Characteristics include:
- Continuous chalk on the cliffs on either side of the Channel containing no major faulting, as observed by Verstegan in 1698
- Four geological strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
, marine sediments laid down 90–100 million years ago; pervious upper and middle chalk above slightly pervious lower chalk and finally impermeable Gault ClayGault is a clay formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period...
. A sandy stratum, glauconitic marl (tortia), is in between the chalk marl and gault clay
- A 25 – layer of chalk marl (French: craie bleue) in the lower third of the lower chalk appeared to present the best tunnelling medium. The chalk has a clay content of 30–40% providing impermeability to groundwater yet relatively easy excavation with strength allowing minimal support. Ideally the tunnel would be bored in the bottom 15 metres (49 ft) of the chalk marl, allowing water inflow from fractures and joints to be minimised, but above the gault clay that would increase stress on the tunnel lining and swell and soften when wet.
On the English side of the channel, the strata
dipStrike and dip refer to the orientation or attitude of a geologic feature. The strike line of a bed, fault, or other planar feature is a line representing the intersection of that feature with a horizontal plane. On a geologic map, this is represented with a short straight line segment oriented...
less than 5°, however, on the French side, this increases to 20°. Jointing and faulting is present on both the English and French sides. On the English side, only minor faults of displacement less than 2 metres (7 ft) exist. On the French side, displacements of up to 15 metres (49 ft) are present owing to the Quenocs
anticlinalIn structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. The term is not to be confused with antiform, which is a purely descriptive term for any fold that is convex up. Therefore if age relationships In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is...
foldThe term fold is used in geology when one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, are bent or curved as a result of permanent deformation. Synsedimentary folds are those due to slumping of sedimentary material before it is lithified. Folds in rocks vary in...
. The faults are of limited width, filled with calcite, pyrite and remoulded clay. The increased dip and faulting restricted the selection of route on the French side. To avoid confusion, microfossil assemblages were used to classify the chalk marl. On the French side, particularly near the coast, the chalk was harder, and more brittle, and more fractured than on the English side. This led to the adoption of different tunnelling techniques on the French and English sides.
The Quaternary undersea valley Fosse Dangaered, and Castle Hill landslip, located at the English portal, caused concerns. Identified by the 1964–65 geophysical survey, the Fosse Dangaered is an infilled valley system extending 80 metres (262 ft) below the seabed, 500 metres (1,640 ft) south of the tunnel route, located mid-channel. A 1986 survey showed that a tributary crossed the path of the tunnel, and so the tunnel route was made as far north and deep as possible. The English terminal had to be located in the Castle Hill landslip, which consists of displaced and tipping blocks of lower chalk, glauconitic marl and gault debris. Thus the area was stabilised by buttressing and inserting drainage adits. The service tunnels were pilot tunnels preceding the main tunnels, so that the geology, areas of crushed rock, and zones of high water inflow could be predicted. Exploratory probing took place in the service tunnels, in the form of extensive forward probing, vertical downward probes and sideways probing.
Surveying
Marine soundings and samplings by Thomé de Gamond were carried out during 1833–1867, establishing the seabed depth at a maximum of 55 metres (180.4 ft) and the continuity of geological strata (layers). Surveying continued over many years, with 166 marine and 70 land-deep boreholes being drilled and over 4,000-line-kilometres of marine geophysical survey completed. Surveys were undertaken in 1958–1959, 1964–1965, 1972–1974 and 1986–1988.
The surveying in 1958–1959 catered for
immersed tubeAn immersed tube is a kind of underwater tunnel composed of segments, constructed elsewhere and floated to the tunnel site to be sunk into place and then linked together. They are commonly used for road and rail crossings of rivers, estuaries and sea channels/harbours...
and bridge designs as well as a bored tunnel, and thus a wide area was investigated. At this time marine geophysics surveying for engineering projects was in its infancy, with poor positioning and resolution from seismic profiling. The 1964–1965 surveys concentrated on a northerly route that left the English coast at Dover harbour; using 70 boreholes, an area of deeply weathered rock with high permeability was located just south of Dover harbour.
Given the previous survey results and access constraints, a more southerly route was investigated in the 1972–1973 survey and the route was confirmed to be feasible. Information for the tunnelling project also came from work before the 1975 cancellation. On the French side at Sangatte a deep shaft with
aditAn adit is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, and ventilated.-Construction:...
s was made. On the English side at Shakespeare Cliff, the government allowed 250 metres (820 ft) of 4.5 metres (15 ft) diameter tunnel to be driven. The actual tunnel alignment, method of excavation and support were essentially the same as the 1975 attempt. In the 1986–1997 survey, previous findings were reinforced and the nature of the gault clay and the tunnelling medium (chalk marl that made up 85% of the route) were investigated. Geophysical techniques from the oil industry were employed.
Tunnelling
Tunnelling between England and France was a major engineering challenge, with the only precedent being the undersea
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan. A serious risk with underwater tunnels is major water inflow due to the water pressure from the sea above under weak ground conditions. The Channel Tunnel also had the challenge of time—being privately funded, early financial return was paramount.
The objective was to construct: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length; a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel between the two main tunnels; pairs of 3.3 metres (11 ft) diameter cross-passages linking the rail tunnels to the service tunnel at 375 metres (1,230 ft) spacing; piston relief ducts 2 metres (7 ft) diameter connecting the rail tunnels at 250 metres (820 ft) spacing; two undersea crossover caverns to connect the rail tunnels. The service tunnel always preceded the main tunnels by at least 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) to ascertain the ground conditions. There was plenty of experience with tunnelling through chalk in the mining industry. The undersea crossover caverns were a complex engineering problem. The French cavern was based on the
Mount Baker RidgeThe Mount Baker Tunnel or Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel carries Interstate 90 under the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is actually a group of four tunnels that carry eight lanes of freeway traffic, plus a separate tunnel for bicycles and pedestrians. The two originals are twin...
freeway tunnel in the US. The UK cavern was dug from the service tunnel ahead of the main tunnels to avoid delay.
Precast segmental linings in the main TBM drives were used, but different solutions were used on the English and French sides. On the French side, neoprene and grout sealed bolted linings made of cast iron or high-strength reinforced concrete were used. On the English side, the main requirement was for speed and bolting of cast-iron lining segments was only carried out in areas of poor geology. In the UK rail tunnels, eight lining segments plus a key segment were used; on the French side, five segments plus a key segment. On the French side, a 55 metres (180 ft) diameter 75 metres (246 ft) deep grout-curtained shaft at Sangatte was used for access. On the English side, a marshalling area was 140 metres (459 ft) below the top of Shakespeare Cliff, and the
New Austrian Tunnelling methodThe New Austrian Tunnelling method was developed between 1957 and 1965 in Austria. It was given its name in Salzburg in 1962 to distinguish it from old Austrian tunnelling approach. The main contributors to the development of NATM were Ladislaus von Rabcewicz, Leopold Müller and Franz Pacher...
(NATM) was first applied in the chalk marl here. On the English side, the land tunnels were driven from Shakespeare Cliff, the same place as the marine tunnels, not from Folkestone. The platform at the base of the cliff was not large enough for all of the drives and, despite environmental objections, tunnel spoil was placed behind a reinforced concrete seawall, on condition of placing the chalk in an enclosed lagoon to avoid wide dispersal of chalk fines. Owing to limited space, the precast lining factory was on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary.
On the French side, owing to the greater permeability to water, earth pressure balance TBMs with open and closed modes were used. The TBMs were of a closed nature during the initial 5 kilometres (3 mi), but then operated as open, boring through the chalk marl stratum. This minimised the impact to the ground and allowed high water pressures to be withstood, and it also alleviated the need to grout ahead of the tunnel. The French effort required five TBMs: two main marine machines, one main land machine (the short land drives of 3 km allowed one TBM to complete the first drive then reverse direction and complete the other), and two service tunnel machines. On the English side, the simpler geology allowed faster open-faced TBMs. Six machines were used, all commenced digging from Shakespeare Cliff, three marine-bound and three for the land tunnels. Towards the completion of the undersea drives, the UK TBMs were driven steeply downwards and buried clear of the tunnel. The French TBMs then completed the tunnel and were dismantled. A 900 mm gauge railway was used on the English side during construction.
In contrast to the English machines, which were simply given alphanumeric names, the French tunnelling machines were all named after women: Brigitte, Europa, Catherine, Virginie, Pascaline, Séverine.
Railway design
Communications
There are three communication systems in the tunnel: concession radio (CR) for mobile vehicles and personnel within Eurotunnel's Concession (terminals, tunnels, coastal shafts); track-to-train radio (TTR) for secure speech and data between trains and the railway control centre; Shuttle internal radio (SIR) for communication between shuttle crew and to passengers over car radios. This service was discontinued within one year of opening because of drivers difficulty setting their radios to the correct frequency (88.8 MHz).{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}
Power supply
All tunnel services run on electricity, shared equally from English and French sources. Power is delivered to the locomotives via an overhead line (catenary) at
The
Channel Tunnel ({{lang-fr|Le tunnel sous la Manche}}; also referred to as the
Chunnel) is a 50.5 kilometres (31.4 mi) undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with
CoquellesCoquelles is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department near Calais in northern France.It is known informally as the town of the Channel Tunnel. The town comprises a shopping centre, hotels and farm in vieille Coquelles , part of the L'Européene autoroute and the Channel Tunnel terminal.The...
,
Pas-de-Calais near
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
in northern
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
beneath the
English ChannelThe English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
at the
Strait of DoverThe Strait of Dover or Dover Strait is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel. The shortest distance across the strait is from the South Foreland, 6 kilometres northeast of Dover in the county of Kent, England, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near to Calais in the French of...
. At its lowest point, it is 75 metres (246.1 ft) deep. At 37.9 kilometres (23.6 mi), the Channel Tunnel possesses the longest undersea portion of any tunnel in the world, although the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan is both longer overall at 53.85 kilometres (33.5 mi), and deeper at 240 metres (787.4 ft) below sea level.
The tunnel carries high-speed
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
passenger trains,
Eurotunnel ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
roll-on/roll-off vehicle transport—the largest in the world—and international rail
freight trainA freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars or goods wagons hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain...
s. The tunnel connects end-to-end with the
LGV NordThe LGV Nord is a French 333-kilometre long high speed rail line, opened in 1993, that connects Paris to the Belgian border and the Channel Tunnel via Lille....
and High Speed 1 high-speed railway lines. In 1996 the
American Society of Civil EngineersThe American Society of Civil Engineers is a professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. It is the oldest national engineering society in the United States. ASCE's vision is to have engineers positioned as global leaders who strive toward...
identified the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Ideas for a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802, but British political and press pressure over compromised national security stalled attempts to construct a tunnel. However, the eventual successful
projectA megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. Megaprojects are typically defined as costing more than US$1 billion and attracting a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets. Megaprojects can also be defined as "initiatives that...
, organised by
EurotunnelGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. manages and operates the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The Company operates the car shuttle services and earns revenue on other trains passing through the tunnel...
, began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994. The project came in 80% over its predicted budget. Since its construction, the tunnel has faced several problems. Fires have disrupted operation of the tunnel. Illegal immigrants and asylum seekers have attempted to use the tunnel to enter the UK, causing a minor diplomatic disagreement over the siting of the
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
refugee campA refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
, which was eventually closed in 2002.
Proposals and attempts
Key dates
| 1802 |
Albert Mathieu put forward a cross-Channel tunnel proposal. |
| 1875 |
The Channel Tunnel Company Ltd began preliminary trials |
| 1882 |
The Abbot's Cliff heading had reached 897 yards (820.2 m) and that at Shakespeare Cliff was 2040 yards (1,865.4 m) in length |
| January 1975 |
A UK–France government backed scheme that started in 1974 was cancelled |
| February 1986 |
The Treaty of Canterbury The Treaty of Canterbury was signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand on 12 February 1986, and is the original document providing for the existing undersea tunnel between the two countries. The treaty is significant and unusual because it is a...
was signed allowing the project to proceed |
| June 1988 |
First tunnelling commenced in France |
| December 1988 |
UK TBM A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
commenced operation |
| December 1990 |
The service tunnel broke through under the Channel |
| May 1994 |
The tunnel was formally opened by HM The QueenElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and President MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
|
| Mid 1994 |
Freight and passenger trains commenced operation |
| November 1996 |
A fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| November 2007 |
High Speed 1, linking London to the tunnel, opened |
| September 2008 |
Another fire in a lorry shuttle severely damaged the tunnel |
| December 2009 |
Eurostar trains stranded in the tunnel due to melting snow affecting the trains' electrical hardware |
In 1802, French mining engineer Albert Mathieu put forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches, and an artificial island mid-Channel for changing horses.
In the 1830s, Frenchman
Aimé Thomé de GamondAimé Thomé de Gamond was a French eccentric engineer and entrepreneur who lived during the 19th century. He is called the "father of the tunnel between France and England"....
performed the first geological and hydrographical surveys on the Channel, between Calais and Dover. Thomé de Gamond explored several schemes and, in 1856, he presented a proposal to Napoleon III for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez to Eastwater Point with a port/airshaft on the Varne sandbank at a cost of 170 million
francThe franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
s, or less than £7 million.
In 1865, a deputation led by
George Ward HuntGeorge Ward Hunt was a British Conservative Party politician and statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1st and 2nd ministries of Benjamin Disraeli.-Background:...
proposed the idea of a tunnel to the
Chancellor of the ExchequerThe Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
of the day,
William Ewart GladstoneWilliam Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
.
After 1867,
William LowWilliam Low was a chain of supermarkets based in Dundee, Scotland, until it was bought out by Tesco for £257m in 1994....
and
Sir John Clarke HawkshawSir John Hawkshaw , was an English civil engineer.-Early life:He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire and was educated at Leeds Grammar School...
promoted ideas, but none were implemented. An official Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a cross-Channel railway tunnel. In 1881, British railway entrepreneur
Sir Edward WatkinSir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
and French
Suez CanalThe Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
contractor Alexandre Lavalley were in the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company that conducted exploratory work on both sides of the Channel. On the English side a 2.13 metres (7 ft) diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a 1893 metres (6,211 ft) pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff. On the French side, a similar machine dug 1669 m (5,475.7 ft) from
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns advocating that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project.
In 1919, during the
Paris Peace ConferenceThe Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
, British Prime Minister
David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend against another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously and nothing came of Lloyd George's proposal.
In 1929 there was another proposal for the building a channel tunnel, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Proponents estimated construction to be about US$150 million. The engineers addressed the concerns of both nations' military leaders by designing two sumps—one near the coast of each country—that could be flooded at will to block the tunnel. This design feature did not override the concerns of both nations' military leaders, and other concerns for hordes of undesirable tourists who would disrupt English habits of living.
In 1955, defence arguments were accepted to be irrelevant because of the dominance of air power; thus, both the British and French governments supported technical and geological surveys. A detailed geological survey was carried out in 1964–65. Construction work commenced on both sides of the Channel in 1974, a government-funded project using twin tunnels on either side of a service tunnel, with capability for car shuttle wagons. In January 1975, to the dismay of the French partners, the British government cancelled the project. The government had changed to the
Labour PartyThe Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and there was uncertainty about
EECThe European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
membership, cost estimates had ballooned to 200% and the national economy was troubled. By this time the British Priestly tunnel boring machine was ready and the Ministry of Transport was able to do a 300 m (984.3 ft) experimental drive. This short tunnel would however be reused as the starting and access point for tunnelling operations from the British side.
In 1979, the "Mouse-hole Project" was suggested when the Conservatives came to power in Britain. The concept was a single-track rail tunnel with a service tunnel, but without shuttle terminals. The British government took no interest in funding the project, but Prime Minister
Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
said she had no objection to a privately funded project. In 1981 British and French leaders Margaret Thatcher and
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
agreed to set up a working group to look into a privately funded project, and in April 1985 promoters were formally invited to submit scheme proposals. Four submissions were shortlisted:
- a rail proposal based on the 1975 scheme presented by Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M),
- Eurobridge: a 4.5 km (2.8 mi) span suspension bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. Outside Tibet and Bhutan, where the first examples of this type of bridge were built in the 15th century, this type of bridge dates from the early 19th century...
with a roadway in an enclosed tube
- Euroroute: a 21 km (13 mi) tunnel between artificial islands approached by bridges, and
- Channel Expressway: large diameter road tunnels with mid-channel ventilation towers.
The cross-Channel ferry industry protested under the name "Flexilink". In 1975 there was no campaign protesting against a fixed link, with one of the largest ferry operators (Sealink) being state-owned. Flexilink continued rousing opposition throughout 1986 and 1987. Public opinion strongly favoured a drive-through tunnel, but ventilation issues, concerns about accident management, and fear of driver mesmerisation led to the only shortlisted rail submission, CTG/F-M, being awarded the project.
Arrangement
The British
Channel Tunnel Group consisted of two banks and five construction companies, while their French counterparts,
France–Manche, consisted of three banks and five construction companies. The role of the banks was to advise on financing and secure loan commitments. On 2 July 1985, the groups formed Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M). Their submission to the British and French governments was drawn from the 1975 project, including 11 volumes and a substantial environmental impact statement.
The design and construction was done by the ten construction companies in the CTG/F-M group. The French terminal and boring from Sangatte was undertaken by the five French construction companies in the joint venture group
GIE Transmanche Construction. The English Terminal and boring from Shakespeare Cliff was undertaken by the five British construction companies in the
Trankslink Joint Venture. The two partnerships were linked by
TransManche LinkTransManche Link or TML was a British-French construction consortium responsible for building the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel between Cheriton in Kent, United Kingdom, and Sangatte in France.-History:...
(TML), a bi-national project organisation. The Maître d'Oeuvre was a supervisory engineering body employed by Eurotunnel under the terms of the concession that monitored project activity and reported back to the governments and banks.
In France, with its long tradition of infrastructure investment, the project garnered widespread approval and in April the French National Assembly gave unanimous support and, in June 1987, after a public inquiry, the Senate gave unanimous support. In Britain, select committees examined the proposal, making history by holding hearings outside of Westminster, in Kent. In February 1987, the third reading of the Channel Tunnel Bill took place in the House of Commons, and was carried by 94 votes to 22. The
Channel Tunnel ActThe Channel Tunnel Act 1987 c.53 is an Act of Parliament which authorised the construction of the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France in accordance with a treaty signed in 1986. Section 2 of the Act forbade any public subsidy of the project....
gained
Royal assentThe granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...
and passed into English law in July of that year. Parliamentary support for the project came partly from provincial members of Parliament on the basis of promises of
regional EurostarRegional Eurostar was the name given to plans to operate Eurostar train services from Paris and Brussels to locations in the United Kingdom beyond London...
through train services that have never materialised; the promises were repeated in 1996 when the contract for construction of the
Channel Tunnel Rail LinkHigh Speed 1 , officially known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and originally as the Continental Main Line , is a high-speed railway line running from London through Kent to the British end of the Channel Tunnel.The line was built to carry international passenger traffic from the United Kingdom...
was awarded.
The Channel Tunnel is a build-own-operate-transfer (
BOOTA boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
) project with a concession. TML would design and build the tunnel, but financing was through a separate legal entity: Eurotunnel. Eurotunnel absorbed CTG/F-M and signed a construction contract with TML; however, the British and French governments controlled final engineering and safety decisions, which are now in the hands of the
Channel Tunnel Safety AuthorityThe Channel Tunnel Safety Authority is an international regulatory body responsible for safety in the Channel Tunnel.The CTSA was established by the Treaty of Canterbury...
. The British and French governments gave Eurotunnel a 55- (later 65-) year operating concession to repay loans and pay dividends. A Railway Usage Agreement was signed between Eurotunnel,
British RailBritish Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
and the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français guaranteeing future revenue in exchange for the railways obtaining half of the tunnel's capacity.
Private funding for such a complex infrastructure project was of unprecedented scale. An initial equity of £45 million was raised by CTG/F-M, increased by £206 million private institutional placement, £770 million was raised in a public share offer that included press and television advertisements, a syndicated bank loan and
letter of creditA standard, commercial letter of credit is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking....
arranged £5 billion. Privately financed, the total investment costs at 1985 prices were £2600 million. At the 1994 completion actual costs were, in 1985 prices, £4650 million: an 80%
cost overrunA cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, is an unexpected cost incurred in excess of a budgeted amount due to an under-estimation of the actual cost during budgeting...
. The cost overrun was partly due to enhanced safety, security, and environmental demands. Financing costs were 140% higher than forecast.
Construction
Working from both the English side and the French side of the Channel, eleven
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s cut through chalk
marlMarl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...
to construct two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. The vehicle shuttle terminals are at
CheritonCheriton is a northern suburb of Folkestone in Kent that is the location of the English terminal of the Channel Tunnel. It is the location of the major army barracks of Shorncliffe Camp.- History :...
(part of
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
) and Coquelles, and are connected to the English and French motorways (
M20The M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It runs from the M25 motorway to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long...
and A16 respectively).
Tunnelling commenced in 1988, and the tunnel began operating in 1994. In 1985 prices, the total construction cost was
£The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
4.650 billion (equivalent to £{{Inflation|UK|4.65|1985}} billion today), an 80% cost overrun. At the peak of construction 15,000 people were employed with daily expenditure over £3 million. Ten workers, eight of them British, were killed during construction between 1987 and 1993, most in the first few months of boring.
Completion
A small, two-inch (50-mm) diameter pilot hole allowed the service tunnel to break through without ceremony on 30 October 1990. On 1 December 1990, Englishman Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel with the media watching. Eurotunnel completed the tunnel on time, and the tunnel was officially opened one year later than originally planned by British
Queen Elizabeth IIElizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
and French President
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
in a ceremony held in
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
on 6 May 1994. The Queen travelled through the tunnel to Calais on a
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
train, which stopped nose to nose with the train that carried President Mitterrand from Paris. Following the ceremony President Mitterrand and the Queen travelled on
Le ShuttleEurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
to a similar ceremony in
FolkestoneFolkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
. A full public service did not start for several months.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now called High Speed 1, runs 69 miles (111 km) from
St Pancras railway stationSt Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
in London to the Channel Tunnel portal at Folkestone in Kent. It cost £5.8 billion. On 16 September 2003 UK Prime Minister
Tony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
opened the first section of High Speed 1, from Folkestone to north Kent. On 6 November 2007 the Queen officially opened High Speed 1 and St Pancras International station, replacing the original slower link to
Waterloo International railway stationWaterloo International station was the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening on 14 November 1994 until 13 November 2007. It stands on the western side of Waterloo railway station, London...
. On High Speed 1 trains travelling at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph), the journey from London to Paris takes 2 hours 15 minutes and London to Brussels takes 1 hour 51 minutes.
In 1996, the American Society of Civil Engineers, with
Popular MechanicsPopular Mechanics is an American magazine first published January 11, 1902 by H. H. Windsor, and has been owned since 1958 by the Hearst Corporation...
, selected the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Engineering
Surveying undertaken in the twenty years before tunnel construction confirmed earlier speculations that a tunnel route could be bored through a chalk marl stratum. The chalk marl was conducive to tunnelling, with impermeability, ease of excavation and strength. While on the English side the chalk marl ran along the entire length of the tunnel, on the French side a length of 5 kilometres (3 mi) had variable and difficult geology. The Channel Tunnel consists of three bores: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length with a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel in between. There are also cross-passages and piston relief ducts. The service tunnel was used as a pilot tunnel, boring ahead of the main tunnels to determine the conditions. English access was provided at Shakespeare Cliff, while French access came from a shaft at Sangatte. The French side used five
tunnel boring machineA tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
s (TBMs); the English side used six. The service tunnel uses Service Tunnel Transport System (STTS) and Light Service Tunnel Vehicles (LADOGS). Fire safety was a critical design issue.
Between the portals at Beussingue and Castle Hill the tunnel is 50.5 kilometres (31 mi) long, with 3.3 kilometres (2 mi) under land on the French side, 9.3 kilometres (6 mi) under land on the UK side and 37.9 kilometres (24 mi) under sea. This makes the Channel Tunnel the second longest rail tunnel in the world, behind the
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan, but with the longest under-sea section. The average depth is 45 metres (148 ft) below the seabed. On the UK side, of the expected 5000000 cubic metre of spoil approximately 1000000 cubic metre was used for fill at the terminal site, and the remainder was deposited at Lower Shakespeare Cliff behind a seawall,
reclaimingLand reclamation, usually known as reclamation, is the process to create new land from sea or riverbeds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or landfill.- Habitation :...
74 acres (30 ha) of land. This land was then made into the
Samphire Hoe Country ParkSamphire Hoe Country Park is a country park situated 3 kilometres west of Dover in southeast England. The park was created by using 4.9 million cubic metres of chalk marl from the Channel Tunnel excavations and is found at the bottom of a section of the White Cliffs of Dover...
. Environmental impact assessment did not identify any major risks for the project, and further studies into safety, noise, and air pollution were overall positive. However, environmental objections were raised over a high-speed link to London.
Geology
Successful tunnelling under the channel required a sound understanding of the topography and geology and the selection of the best rock strata through which to tunnel. The geology generally consists of northeasterly dipping Cretaceous strata, part of the northern limb of the Wealden-Boulonnais dome. Characteristics include:
- Continuous chalk on the cliffs on either side of the Channel containing no major faulting, as observed by Verstegan in 1698
- Four geological strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
, marine sediments laid down 90–100 million years ago; pervious upper and middle chalk above slightly pervious lower chalk and finally impermeable Gault ClayGault is a clay formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period...
. A sandy stratum, glauconitic marl (tortia), is in between the chalk marl and gault clay
- A 25 – layer of chalk marl (French: craie bleue) in the lower third of the lower chalk appeared to present the best tunnelling medium. The chalk has a clay content of 30–40% providing impermeability to groundwater yet relatively easy excavation with strength allowing minimal support. Ideally the tunnel would be bored in the bottom 15 metres (49 ft) of the chalk marl, allowing water inflow from fractures and joints to be minimised, but above the gault clay that would increase stress on the tunnel lining and swell and soften when wet.
On the English side of the channel, the strata
dipStrike and dip refer to the orientation or attitude of a geologic feature. The strike line of a bed, fault, or other planar feature is a line representing the intersection of that feature with a horizontal plane. On a geologic map, this is represented with a short straight line segment oriented...
less than 5°, however, on the French side, this increases to 20°. Jointing and faulting is present on both the English and French sides. On the English side, only minor faults of displacement less than 2 metres (7 ft) exist. On the French side, displacements of up to 15 metres (49 ft) are present owing to the Quenocs
anticlinalIn structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. The term is not to be confused with antiform, which is a purely descriptive term for any fold that is convex up. Therefore if age relationships In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is...
foldThe term fold is used in geology when one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, are bent or curved as a result of permanent deformation. Synsedimentary folds are those due to slumping of sedimentary material before it is lithified. Folds in rocks vary in...
. The faults are of limited width, filled with calcite, pyrite and remoulded clay. The increased dip and faulting restricted the selection of route on the French side. To avoid confusion, microfossil assemblages were used to classify the chalk marl. On the French side, particularly near the coast, the chalk was harder, and more brittle, and more fractured than on the English side. This led to the adoption of different tunnelling techniques on the French and English sides.
The Quaternary undersea valley Fosse Dangaered, and Castle Hill landslip, located at the English portal, caused concerns. Identified by the 1964–65 geophysical survey, the Fosse Dangaered is an infilled valley system extending 80 metres (262 ft) below the seabed, 500 metres (1,640 ft) south of the tunnel route, located mid-channel. A 1986 survey showed that a tributary crossed the path of the tunnel, and so the tunnel route was made as far north and deep as possible. The English terminal had to be located in the Castle Hill landslip, which consists of displaced and tipping blocks of lower chalk, glauconitic marl and gault debris. Thus the area was stabilised by buttressing and inserting drainage adits. The service tunnels were pilot tunnels preceding the main tunnels, so that the geology, areas of crushed rock, and zones of high water inflow could be predicted. Exploratory probing took place in the service tunnels, in the form of extensive forward probing, vertical downward probes and sideways probing.
Surveying
Marine soundings and samplings by Thomé de Gamond were carried out during 1833–1867, establishing the seabed depth at a maximum of 55 metres (180.4 ft) and the continuity of geological strata (layers). Surveying continued over many years, with 166 marine and 70 land-deep boreholes being drilled and over 4,000-line-kilometres of marine geophysical survey completed. Surveys were undertaken in 1958–1959, 1964–1965, 1972–1974 and 1986–1988.
The surveying in 1958–1959 catered for
immersed tubeAn immersed tube is a kind of underwater tunnel composed of segments, constructed elsewhere and floated to the tunnel site to be sunk into place and then linked together. They are commonly used for road and rail crossings of rivers, estuaries and sea channels/harbours...
and bridge designs as well as a bored tunnel, and thus a wide area was investigated. At this time marine geophysics surveying for engineering projects was in its infancy, with poor positioning and resolution from seismic profiling. The 1964–1965 surveys concentrated on a northerly route that left the English coast at Dover harbour; using 70 boreholes, an area of deeply weathered rock with high permeability was located just south of Dover harbour.
Given the previous survey results and access constraints, a more southerly route was investigated in the 1972–1973 survey and the route was confirmed to be feasible. Information for the tunnelling project also came from work before the 1975 cancellation. On the French side at Sangatte a deep shaft with
aditAn adit is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, and ventilated.-Construction:...
s was made. On the English side at Shakespeare Cliff, the government allowed 250 metres (820 ft) of 4.5 metres (15 ft) diameter tunnel to be driven. The actual tunnel alignment, method of excavation and support were essentially the same as the 1975 attempt. In the 1986–1997 survey, previous findings were reinforced and the nature of the gault clay and the tunnelling medium (chalk marl that made up 85% of the route) were investigated. Geophysical techniques from the oil industry were employed.
Tunnelling
Tunnelling between England and France was a major engineering challenge, with the only precedent being the undersea
Seikan TunnelThe Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
in Japan. A serious risk with underwater tunnels is major water inflow due to the water pressure from the sea above under weak ground conditions. The Channel Tunnel also had the challenge of time—being privately funded, early financial return was paramount.
The objective was to construct: two 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter rail tunnels, 30 metres (98 ft) apart, 50 kilometres (31 mi) in length; a 4.8 metres (16 ft) diameter service tunnel between the two main tunnels; pairs of 3.3 metres (11 ft) diameter cross-passages linking the rail tunnels to the service tunnel at 375 metres (1,230 ft) spacing; piston relief ducts 2 metres (7 ft) diameter connecting the rail tunnels at 250 metres (820 ft) spacing; two undersea crossover caverns to connect the rail tunnels. The service tunnel always preceded the main tunnels by at least 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) to ascertain the ground conditions. There was plenty of experience with tunnelling through chalk in the mining industry. The undersea crossover caverns were a complex engineering problem. The French cavern was based on the
Mount Baker RidgeThe Mount Baker Tunnel or Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel carries Interstate 90 under the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is actually a group of four tunnels that carry eight lanes of freeway traffic, plus a separate tunnel for bicycles and pedestrians. The two originals are twin...
freeway tunnel in the US. The UK cavern was dug from the service tunnel ahead of the main tunnels to avoid delay.
Precast segmental linings in the main TBM drives were used, but different solutions were used on the English and French sides. On the French side, neoprene and grout sealed bolted linings made of cast iron or high-strength reinforced concrete were used. On the English side, the main requirement was for speed and bolting of cast-iron lining segments was only carried out in areas of poor geology. In the UK rail tunnels, eight lining segments plus a key segment were used; on the French side, five segments plus a key segment. On the French side, a 55 metres (180 ft) diameter 75 metres (246 ft) deep grout-curtained shaft at Sangatte was used for access. On the English side, a marshalling area was 140 metres (459 ft) below the top of Shakespeare Cliff, and the
New Austrian Tunnelling methodThe New Austrian Tunnelling method was developed between 1957 and 1965 in Austria. It was given its name in Salzburg in 1962 to distinguish it from old Austrian tunnelling approach. The main contributors to the development of NATM were Ladislaus von Rabcewicz, Leopold Müller and Franz Pacher...
(NATM) was first applied in the chalk marl here. On the English side, the land tunnels were driven from Shakespeare Cliff, the same place as the marine tunnels, not from Folkestone. The platform at the base of the cliff was not large enough for all of the drives and, despite environmental objections, tunnel spoil was placed behind a reinforced concrete seawall, on condition of placing the chalk in an enclosed lagoon to avoid wide dispersal of chalk fines. Owing to limited space, the precast lining factory was on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary.
On the French side, owing to the greater permeability to water, earth pressure balance TBMs with open and closed modes were used. The TBMs were of a closed nature during the initial 5 kilometres (3 mi), but then operated as open, boring through the chalk marl stratum. This minimised the impact to the ground and allowed high water pressures to be withstood, and it also alleviated the need to grout ahead of the tunnel. The French effort required five TBMs: two main marine machines, one main land machine (the short land drives of 3 km allowed one TBM to complete the first drive then reverse direction and complete the other), and two service tunnel machines. On the English side, the simpler geology allowed faster open-faced TBMs. Six machines were used, all commenced digging from Shakespeare Cliff, three marine-bound and three for the land tunnels. Towards the completion of the undersea drives, the UK TBMs were driven steeply downwards and buried clear of the tunnel. The French TBMs then completed the tunnel and were dismantled. A 900 mm gauge railway was used on the English side during construction.
In contrast to the English machines, which were simply given alphanumeric names, the French tunnelling machines were all named after women: Brigitte, Europa, Catherine, Virginie, Pascaline, Séverine.
Railway design
Communications
There are three communication systems in the tunnel: concession radio (CR) for mobile vehicles and personnel within Eurotunnel's Concession (terminals, tunnels, coastal shafts); track-to-train radio (TTR) for secure speech and data between trains and the railway control centre; Shuttle internal radio (SIR) for communication between shuttle crew and to passengers over car radios. This service was discontinued within one year of opening because of drivers difficulty setting their radios to the correct frequency (88.8 MHz).{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}
Power supply
All tunnel services run on electricity, shared equally from English and French sources. Power is delivered to the locomotives via an overhead line (catenary) at {{nowrap.
A large proportion of the railway south of London uses a 750 V DC
third railA third rail is a method of providing electric power to a railway train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway track. It is used typically in a mass transit or rapid transit system, which has alignments in its own corridors, fully or almost...
to deliver electrical power; however since the opening of High Speed 1 there is no need to use the third rail system for any part of the Eurostar journey. High Speed 1, the tunnel itself and the route to Paris has power provided via overhead catenary at 25 kV 50 Hz. The railways on "classic" lines in Belgium are also electrified by overhead catenaries, but at 3000 V DC.
Signalling
A cab signalling system is used that gives information directly to train drivers on a display. There is
Automatic Train ProtectionAutomatic Train Protection in Great Britain refers to either of two implementations of a train protection system installed in some trains in order to help prevent collisions through a driver's failure to observe a signal or speed restriction...
(ATP) that stops the train if the speed differs from that indicated on the in-cab display. TVM430, as used on
LGV NordThe LGV Nord is a French 333-kilometre long high speed rail line, opened in 1993, that connects Paris to the Belgian border and the Channel Tunnel via Lille....
, is used in the tunnel. The maximum allowed speed is {{nowrap|160 km/h}}.
Track system
The American Sonneville International Corporation track system was chosen, consisting of UIC60 rails on 900A grade resting on microcellular
EVAEthylene vinyl acetate is the copolymer of ethylene and vinyl acetate. The weight percent vinyl acetate usually varies from 10 to 40%, with the remainder being ethylene....
pads, bolted into concrete. The larger European GB+
loading gaugeA loading gauge defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures...
was used rather than one of the smaller UK alternatives; this gauge is maintained on High Speed 1 as far as
BarkingBarking is a suburban town in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, in East London, England. A retail and commercial centre situated in the west of the borough, it lies east of Charing Cross. Barking was in the historic county of Essex until it was absorbed by Greater London. The area is...
in east London. Ballasted track was ruled out owing to maintenance constraints and a need for geometric stability.
Rolling stock
Eurotunnel Shuttle
{{Main|Eurotunnel Shuttle|Eurotunnel Class 9}}
Initially 38 Le Shle locomotives were commissioned, working in pairs with one at each end of a shuttle train. The shuttles have two separate halves: single and double deck. Each half has two loading/unloading wagons and twelve carrier wagons. Eurotunnel's original order was for nine tourist shuttles.
HGV shuttles also have two halves, with each half containing one loading wagon, one unloading wagon and 14 carrier wagons. There is a club car behind the leading locomotive. Eurotunnel originally ordered six HGV shuttles rakes.
Freight locomotives
{{See also|British Rail Class 92}}
Forty-six Class 92 locomotives for hauling freight trains and overnight passenger trains (the
NightstarThe Nightstar was a proposed overnight sleeper service from various parts of Britain to continental Europe, via the Channel Tunnel. To run alongside the Eurostar and north of London day time Regional Eurostar services, the Nightstar was the last part in a round the clock passenger train...
project, which was abandoned) were commissioned, which can run on both overhead AC and
third-railA third rail is a method of providing electric power to a railway train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway track. It is used typically in a mass transit or rapid transit system, which has alignments in its own corridors, fully or almost...
DC power.
International passenger
{{Main|British Rail Class 373}}
Thirty-one Eurostar trains—based on the French TGV—built to UK
loading gaugeA loading gauge defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures...
, and with many modifications for safety within the tunnel, were commissioned, with split ownership between British Rail,
French National Railway CompanyThe SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...
and National Railway Company of Belgium.
British RailBritish Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
ordered seven more for services north of London.
At the end of 2009, extensive fire-proofing requirements were dropped and
Deutsche BahnDeutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...
received permission to run German Intercity-Express (ICE) trains through the Channel Tunnel in the future. On 19 October 2010 Deutsche Bahn ran the first ICE train through the Channel Tunnel arriving in St. Pancras after evacuation tests in the tunnel were a success.{{Failed verification|date=October 2010}}
Service locomotives
Diesel locomotiveA diesel locomotive is a type of railroad locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine, a reciprocating engine operating on the Diesel cycle as invented by Dr. Rudolf Diesel...
s for rescue and shunting work are
Eurotunnel Class 0001The Eurotunnel Class 0001 Bo-Bo diesel locomotives were built by Maschinenbau Kiel between 1991 and 1992. They are very similar to the NS 6400 Class....
and
Eurotunnel Class 0031The Eurotunnel Class 0031 0-4-0 diesel locomotives were built by the Hunslet Engine Company between 1989 and 1990. They were built as 900 mm gauge, but were rebuilt to standard 4 foot 8½ inch gauge by Schöma in Germany between 1993 and 1994.Twelve locomotives were built, numbered 0031-0042...
.
Usage and services
Services offered by the tunnel are:
- Eurotunnel Shuttle
Eurotunnel Le Shuttle is a shuttle service between Calais/Coquelles in France and Folkestone in Britain. It conveys road vehicles by rail through the Channel Tunnel...
(formerly Le Shuttle) roll-on roll-off shuttle service for road vehicles,
- Eurostar
Eurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
passenger trains,
- through freight trains.
Both the freight and passenger traffic forecasts that led to the construction of the tunnel were largely and universally overestimated. Particularly, Eurotunnel's commissioned forecasts were over-predictions. Although the captured share of Channel crossings (competing with air and sea) was forecast correctly, high competition and reduced tariffs has led to low revenue. Overall cross-Channel traffic was overestimated.
However with the
EU'sThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
liberalisation of international rail services, the tunnel and High Speed 1 have been open to competition since 2010. There have been a number of operators interested in running services including
Deutsche BahnDeutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...
, through the tunnel and along High Speed 1 to London.
Passenger traffic volumes
Total cross-tunnel passenger traffic volumes peaked at 18.4 million in 1998, then dropped to 14.9 million in 2003, from then rising again to 17.0 million in 2010.
At the time of the decision about building the tunnel, 15.9 million passengers were predicted for Eurostar trains in the opening year. In 1995, the first full year, actual numbers were a little over 2.9 million, growing to 7.1 million in 2000, then dropping again to 6.3 million in 2003. However, Eurostar was also limited by the lack of a high-speed connection on the British side. After the completion of High Speed 1 (formerly CTRL) to London in two stages in 2003 and 2007, traffic increased. In 2008, Eurostar carried 9,113,371 passengers in cross-Channel-Tunnel traffic, a 10% increase over the previous year, despite traffic limitations due to the
2008 Channel Tunnel fireThe 2008 Channel Tunnel fire occurred on 11 September 2008 in the Channel Tunnel. The incident involved a France-bound Eurotunnel Shuttle train carrying heavy goods vehicles and their drivers....
. Eurostar passenger numbers continued to increase, reaching 9,528,558 in 2010.
| Year |
Passengers transported... |
cross_chunnel|A|A}}
(actual ticket sales) | by Eurotunnel Passenger Shuttles
(estimated, millions) | Total
(estimated, millions) |
| 1994 |
~100,000 |
0.2 |
0.3 |
| 1995 |
2,920,309 |
4.4 |
7.3 |
| 1996 |
4,995,010 |
7.9 |
12.9 |
| 1997 |
6,004,268 |
8.6 |
14.6 |
| 1998 |
6,307,849 |
12.1 |
18.4 |
| 1999 |
6,593,247 |
11.0 |
17.6 |
| 2000 |
7,130,417 |
9.9 |
17.0 |
| 2001 |
6,947,135 |
9.4 |
16.3 |
| 2002 |
6,602,817 |
8.6 |
15.2 |
| 2003 |
6,314,795 |
8.6 |
14.9 |
| 2004 |
7,276,675 |
7.8 |
15.1 |
| 2005 |
7,454,497 |
8.2 |
15.7 |
| 2006 |
7,858,337 |
7.8 |
15.7 |
| 2007 |
8,260,980 |
7.9 |
16.2 |
| 2008 |
9,113,371 |
7.0 |
16.1 |
| 2009 |
9,220,233 |
6.9 |
16.1 |
| 2010 |
9,528,558 |
7.5 |
17.0 |
{{note label|cross_chunnel|A|A}}only passengers taking Eurostar to cross the Channel |
Freight traffic volumes
Cross-tunnel freight traffic volumes have been erratic, with a decrease during 1997 due to a closure caused by a fire in a freight shuttle. The total freight crossings increased over the period, indicating the substitutability of the tunnel by sea crossings. The tunnel has achieved a cross-Channel freight traffic market share close to or above Eurotunnel's 1980s predictions but Eurotunnel's 1990 and 1994 predictions were overestimates.
For freight transported on through freight trains, the first year freight prediction was 7.2 million gross tonnes, however, the actual 1995 figure was 1.3 million gross tonnes. Through freight volumes peaked in 1998 at 3.1 million tonnes. However, with continuing problems, this figure fell back to 1.21 million tonnes in 2007, increasing again slightly to 1.24 million tonnes in 2008. Together with that carried on freight shuttles, freight traffic growth has occurred since opening, with 6.4 million tonnes carried in 1995, 18.4 million tonnes recorded in 2003 and 19.6 million tonnes in 2007. Numbers fell back in the wake of the 2008 fire.
| Year |
Freight transported... |
by through freight trains
(actual tonnes) | by Eurotunnel Truck Shuttles
(estimated, million tonnes) | Total
(estimated, million tonnes) |
| 1994 |
0 |
0.8 |
0.8 |
| 1995 |
1,349,802 |
5.1 |
6.4 |
| 1996 |
2,783,774 |
6.7 |
9.5 |
| 1997 |
2,925,171 |
3.3 |
6.2 |
| 1998 |
3,141,438 |
9.2 |
12.3 |
| 1999 |
2,865,251 |
10.9 |
13.8 |
| 2000 |
2,947,385 |
14.7 |
17.6 |
| 2001 |
2,447,432 |
15.6 |
18.0 |
| 2002 |
1,463,580 |
15.6 |
17.1 |
| 2003 |
1,743,686 |
16.7 |
18.4 |
| 2004 |
1,889,175 |
16.6 |
18.5 |
| 2005 |
1,587,790 |
17.0 |
18.6 |
| 2006 |
1,569,429 |
16.9 |
18.5 |
| 2007 |
1,213,647 |
18.4 |
19.6 |
| 2008 |
1,239,445 |
14.2 |
15.4 |
| 2009 |
1,181,089 |
10.0 |
11.2 |
| 2010 |
1,128,079 |
14.2 |
15.3 |
Eurotunnel's freight subsidiary is
Europorte 2Europorte is a European rail freight company, a subsidiary of Eurotunnel; operating in France and through the Channel Tunnel.The company was formed in 2009 as an entity encompassing the previous operations of Europorte 2 and the France based businesses of Veolia Cargo...
. In September 2006 EWS, the UK's largest rail freight operator, announced that owing to cessation of UK-French government subsidies of £52 million per annum to cover the Channel Tunnel "Minimum User Charge" (a subsidy of around £13,000 per train, at a traffic level of 4,000 trains per annum), freight trains would stop running after 30 November.
Economic performance
Shares in Eurotunnel were issued at £3.50 per share on 9 December 1987. By mid-1989 the price had risen to £11.00. Delays and cost overruns led to the share price dropping; during demonstration runs in October 1994 the share price reached an all-time low value. Eurotunnel suspended payment on its debt in September 1995 to avoid bankruptcy. In December 1997 the British and French governments extended Eurotunnel's operating concession by 34 years to 2086. Financial restructuring of Eurotunnel occurred in mid-1998, reducing debt and financial charges. Despite the restructuring
The EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
reported in 1998 that to break even Eurotunnel would have to increase fares, traffic and market share for sustainability. A cost benefit analysis of the Channel Tunnel indicated that there were few impacts on the wider economy and few developments associated with the project, and that the British economy would have been better off if the tunnel had not been constructed.
Under the terms of the Concession, Eurotunnel was obliged to investigate a cross-Channel road tunnel. In December 1999 road and rail tunnel proposals were presented to the British and French governments, but it was stressed that there was not enough demand for a second tunnel. A 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, with the French border controls on the UK side of the tunnel and vice versa. For certain city-to-city trains, the train itself represents a control zone. A binational emergency plan coordinates UK and French emergency activities.
In 1999 Eurostar posted its first ever net profits, having previously made a loss of £925m in 1995.
Terminals
The terminals sites are at
CheritonCheriton is a northern suburb of Folkestone in Kent that is the location of the English terminal of the Channel Tunnel. It is the location of the major army barracks of Shorncliffe Camp.- History :...
(Folkestone in the United Kingdom) and
CoquellesCoquelles is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department near Calais in northern France.It is known informally as the town of the Channel Tunnel. The town comprises a shopping centre, hotels and farm in vieille Coquelles , part of the L'Européene autoroute and the Channel Tunnel terminal.The...
(Calais in France). The terminals are unique facilities designed to transfer vehicles from the motorway onto trains at a rate of 700 cars and 113 heavy vehicles per hour. The UK site uses the
M20 motorwayThe M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It runs from the M25 motorway to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long...
. The terminals are organised with the frontier controls juxtaposed with the entry to the system to allow travellers to go onto the motorway at the destination country immediately after leaving the shuttle. The area of the UK site was severely constrained and the design was challenging. The French layout was achieved more easily. To achieve design output, the shuttles accept cars on double-decks; for flexibility, ramps were placed inside the shuttles to provide access to the top decks. At Folkestone there are 20 kilometres (12 mi) of mainline track and 45 turnouts with eight platforms. At Calais there are 30 kilometres (19 mi) of track with 44 turnouts. At the terminals the shuttle trains traverse a figure eight to reduce uneven wear on the wheels. There is a freight marshalling yard west of Cheriton at
Dollands Moor Freight YardDollands Moor Freight Yard is a railway freight yard near Folkestone in Kent, and was purposely built in 1988 for the Channel Tunnel. It is to the west of the Eurotunnel Folkestone Terminal, and just to the south of the M20 Motorway.- External links :*...
.
Regional impact
A 1996 report from the
European CommissionThe European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
predicted that
KentKent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
and
Nord-Pas de CalaisNord-Pas de Calais , Nord for short, is one of the 27 regions of France. It consists of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, in the north and has a border with Belgium. Most of the region was once part of the Southern Netherlands, within the Low Countries, and gradually became part of France...
had to face increased traffic volumes due to general growth of cross-Channel traffic and traffic attracted by the tunnel. In Kent, a high-speed rail line to London would transfer traffic from road to rail. Kent's regional development would benefit from the tunnel, but being so close to London restricts the benefits. Gains are in the traditional industries and are largely dependent on the development of Ashford International passenger station, without which Kent would be totally dependent on London's expansion. Nord-Pas-de-Calais enjoys a strong internal symbolic effect of the Tunnel which results in significant gains in manufacturing.
The removal of a bottleneck by means like the Channel Tunnel does not necessarily induce economic gains in all adjacent regions, the image of a region being connected to the European high-speed transport and active political response are more important for regional economic development. However, some small-medium enterprises located in the immediate vicinity of the terminal have used the opportunity to re-brand the profile of their business with positive effect, such as
The New Inn at
EtchinghillEtchinghill is a village in Kent, England, about 5 km north of Hythe, and 1 km north of the Channel Tunnel terminal at Cheriton, near Folkestone. The village has a standard golf course noted for its hills, as well as a pub restaurant called The New Inn which claims to be the closest pub...
which was able to commercially exploit its unique selling point as being 'the closest pub to the Channel Tunnel'. Tunnel-induced regional development is small compared to general economic growth. The South East of England is likely to benefit developmentally and socially from faster and cheaper transport to continental Europe, but the benefits are unlikely to be equally distributed throughout the region. The overall environmental impact is almost certainly negative.
Since the opening of the tunnel, small positive impacts on the wider economy have been felt, however, it is difficult to identify major economic successes directly attributed to the tunnel. The Eurotunnel does operate profitably, offering an alternative transportation mode unaffected by poor weather. both
EurotunnelGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. manages and operates the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The Company operates the car shuttle services and earns revenue on other trains passing through the tunnel...
and
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
. High costs of construction did delay profitability, however, and companies involved in the Channel Tunnel's construction and operation early in operation relied on government aid to deal with debts amounted. Eurotunnel has been described as being in a serious situation.
Fires
{{Main|1996 Channel Tunnel fire|2008 Channel Tunnel fire}}
There have been three fires in the Channel Tunnel that were significant enough to close the tunnel—all on the heavy goods vehicle (HGV) shuttles—and other more minor incidents.
During an "invitation only" testing phase on 9 December 1994, a fire broke out in a Ford Escort car whilst its owner had been loading it on to the upper deck of a tourist shuttle. The fire started at approximately 10:00 with the shuttle train stationary in the Folkestone terminal and was extinguished around 40 minutes later with no passenger injuries.
On 18 November 1996, a fire broke out on a heavy goods vehicle shuttle wagon in the tunnel but nobody was seriously hurt. The exact cause is unknown, although it was not a Eurotunnel equipment or rolling stock problem; it may have been due to arson of a heavy goods vehicle. It is estimated that the heart of the fire reached 1000 °C (1,832 °F), with the tunnel severely damaged over 46 metres (151 ft), with some 500 metres (1,640 ft) affected to some extent. Full operation recommenced six months after the fire.
The tunnel was closed for several hours on 21 August 2006, when a truck on an HGV shuttle train caught fire. On 11 September 2008, a fire occurred in the Channel Tunnel at 13:57 GMT. The incident started on a freight-carrying vehicle train travelling towards France. The event occurred 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from the French entrance to the tunnel. No one was killed but several people were taken to hospitals suffering from smoke inhalation, and minor cuts and bruises. The tunnel was closed to all traffic, with the undamaged South Tunnel reopening for limited services two days later. Full service resumed on 9 February 2009 after repairs costing €60 million.
Train failures
On the night of 19/20 February 1996, approximately 1,000 passengers became trapped in the Channel Tunnel when two
British Rail Class 373The British Rail Class 373 or TGV-TMST train is an electric multiple unit that operates Eurostar's high-speed rail service between Britain, France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel...
trains on continent-bound
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
service broke down owing to failures of electronic circuits caused by snow and ice being deposited and then melting on the circuit boards.
On 3 August 2007, an electrical failure lasting six hours caused passengers to be trapped in the tunnel on a Eurotunnel shuttle crossing.
On the evening of 18 December 2009, during the December 2009 European snowfall, five London-bound trains operating
EurostarEurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between England and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel....
services failed inside the tunnel, trapping 2,000 passengers in the tunnel overnight. Five
Class 373The British Rail Class 373 or TGV-TMST train is an electric multiple unit that operates Eurostar's high-speed rail service between Britain, France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel...
trains had departed from
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and Paris and encountered cold temperatures in Northern France, the coldest for eight years. A Eurotunnel spokesperson explained that the problem had arisen because of 'fluffy snow' in France, which had evaded the 'winterisation' shields designed to stop snow getting into the electrics. Electrical failure was then caused by the transition from the cold air in France to the warm atmosphere inside the tunnel. One train from Brussels had been turned back before reaching the tunnel; two trains were hauled out of the tunnel using diesel-powered
Eurotunnel Class 0001The Eurotunnel Class 0001 Bo-Bo diesel locomotives were built by Maschinenbau Kiel between 1991 and 1992. They are very similar to the NS 6400 Class....
. The blocking of the Channel Tunnel led to the implementation of
Operation StackOperation Stack is the name used by Kent Police and the Port of Dover in England to refer to the method of using sections of the M20 motorway in Kent to park lorries when the Channel Tunnel, English Channel or Dover ports are blocked by bad weather or industrial action, or enforced closure due to...
, the transformation of the
M20 motorwayThe M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It runs from the M25 motorway to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long...
into a linear car park.
Snow that had built up on the trains then melted in the heat of the tunnel, the water causing electrical faults. The occasion was the first time during the fifteen years that a Eurostar train had to be evacuated inside the tunnel itself; the failing of four at once being described as "unprecedented". The Channel Tunnel reopened the following morning.
Nirj DevaNiranjan Joseph "Nirj" De Silva Deva-Aditya FRSA DL is a politician from the United Kingdom. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been a Member of the European Parliament representing South East England since 1999...
,
Member of the European ParliamentA Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...
for South East England, had called for Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown to resign over the incidents. An independent report by
Christopher GarnettChristopher Garnett is a member of the Board of the Olympic Delivery Authority, and was until recently the Chief Executive Officer of Great North Eastern Railway and simultaneously Senior Vice President and Chief Executive of the Rail Division of Sea Containers, GNER's parent company.Before this,...
(former CEO of
Great North Eastern RailwayGreat North Eastern Railway was a British train operating company, owned by Sea Containers Ltd. It operated high-speed express train services on the East Coast Main Line from 1996 until 9 December 2007 when the franchise was taken over by National Express East Coast.GNER's primary service routes...
) and Claude Gressier (a French transport expert) on the 18/19 December 2009 incidents was issued in February 2010, making 21 recommendations.
A further Class 373 unit on Brussels–London service broke down in the tunnel on 7 January 2010. The train had 236 passengers on board and was towed to Ashford; other trains that had not yet reached the tunnel were turned back.
Asylum and immigration
Immigrants and would-be asylum seekers have been known to use the tunnel to attempt to enter Britain. By 1997, the problem had already attracted international press attention, and the French Red Cross opened a refugee centre at
SangatteSangatte is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department on the northern coast of France on the English Channel.Like many place names in French Flanders, the name is of Flemish origin and means "gap in the sand".-Engineering:...
in 1999, using a
warehouseA warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...
once used for tunnel construction; by 2002 it housed up to 1500 persons at a time, most of them trying to get to the UK. In 2001, most came from
AfghanistanAfghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Iraq and
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, but African and Eastern European countries are also represented.
Most migrants who got into Britain found some way to ride a freight train, but others used Eurostar. Though the facilities were fenced, airtight security was deemed impossible; refugees would even jump from bridges onto moving trains. In several incidents people were injured during the crossing; others tampered with railway equipment, causing delays and requiring repairs. Eurotunnel said it was losing £5m per month because of the problem. A dozen refugees have died in crossing attempts.
In 2001 and 2002, several riots broke out at Sangatte and groups of refugees (up to 550 in a December 2001 incident) stormed the fences and attempted to enter
en masse. Immigrants have also arrived as legitimate Eurostar passengers without proper entry papers.
Local authorities in both France and the UK called for the closure of Sangatte, and Eurotunnel twice sought an injunction against the centre. The United Kingdom blamed France for allowing Sangatte to open, and France blamed the UK for its lax asylum rules and the EU for not having a uniform immigration policy. The
cause célèbreA is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
nature of the problem even included journalists detained as they followed refugees onto railway property.
In 2002, after the
European CommissionThe European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
told France that it was in breach of European Union rules on the free transfer of goods, because of the delays and closures as a result of its poor security, a double fence was built at a cost of £5 million, reducing the numbers of refugees detected each week reaching Britain on goods trains from 250 to almost none. Other measures included
CCTVClosed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
cameras and increased police patrols. At the end of 2002, the Sangatte centre was closed after the UK agreed to take some of its refugees.
{{See also|asylum shopping}}
Safety
The
Channel Tunnel Safety AuthorityThe Channel Tunnel Safety Authority is an international regulatory body responsible for safety in the Channel Tunnel.The CTSA was established by the Treaty of Canterbury...
is responsible for some aspects of safety regulation in the tunnel; it reports to the IGC.
The service tunnel is used for access to technical equipment in cross-passages and equipment rooms, to provide fresh-air ventilation, and for emergency evacuation. The Service Tunnel Transport System (STTS) allows fast access to all areas of the tunnel. The service vehicles are rubber-tyred with a buried guidance wire system. Twenty-four STTS vehicles were made, and are used mainly for maintenance but also for firefighting and in emergencies. "Pods" with different purposes, up to a payload of 2.5 –, are inserted into the side of the vehicles. The STTS vehicles cannot turn around within the tunnel, and are driven from either end. The maximum speed is 80 kilometre per hour when the steering is locked. A smaller fleet of fifteen Light Service Tunnel Vehicles (LADOGS) were introduced to supplement the STTSs. The LADOGS have a short wheelbase with a 3.4 m (11.2 ft) turning circle allowing two-point turns within the service tunnel. Steering cannot be locked like the STTS vehicles, and maximum speed is 50 kilometre per hour. Pods up to 1 tonne can be loaded onto the rear of the vehicles. Drivers in the tunnel sit on the right, and the vehicles drive on the left. Owing to the risk of French personnel driving on their native right side of the road, sensors in the road vehicles alert the driver if the vehicle strays to the right side of the tunnel.
The three tunnels contain 6000 tonne of air that needs to be conditioned for comfort and safety. Air is supplied from
ventilationVentilating is the process of "changing" or replacing air in any space to provide high indoor air quality...
buildings at Shakespeare Cliff and Sangatte, with each building capable of full duty providing 100% standby capacity. Supplementary ventilation also exists on either side of the tunnel. In the event of a fire, ventilation is used to keep smoke out of the service tunnel and move smoke in one direction in the main tunnel to give passengers clean air. The Channel Tunnel was the first mainline railway tunnel to have special cooling equipment. Heat is generated from traction equipment and drag. The design limit was set at 30 °C (86 °F), using a mechanical cooling system with refrigeration plants on both the English and French sides that run chilled water circulating in pipes within the tunnel.
Trains travelling at high speed create piston-effect pressure changes that can affect passenger comfort, ventilation systems, tunnel doors, fans and the structure of the trains, and drag on the trains. Piston relief
ductsDucts are used in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning to deliver and remove air. These needed airflows include, for example, supply air, return air, and exhaust air. Ducts also deliver, most commonly as part of the supply air, ventilation air...
of 2 metres (7 ft) diameter were chosen to solve the problem, with 4 ducts per kilometre to give close to optimum results. Unfortunately this design led to unacceptable lateral forces on the trains so a reduction in train speed was required and restrictors were installed in the ducts.
The safety issue of a fire on a passenger-vehicle shuttle garnered much attention, with Eurotunnel itself noting that fire was the risk gathering the most attention in a 1994 Safety Case for three reasons: ferry companies opposed to passengers being allowed to remain with their cars;
Home OfficeThe Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
statistics indicating that car fires had doubled in ten years; and the long length of the tunnel. Eurotunnel commissioned the UK Fire Research Station to give reports of vehicle fires, as well as liaising with Kent Fire Brigade to gather vehicle fire statistics over one year. Fire tests took place at the French Mines Research Establishment with a mock wagon used to investigate how cars burned. The wagon door systems are designed to withstand fire inside the wagon for 30 minutes, longer than the transit time of 27 minutes. Wagon air conditioning units help to purge dangerous fumes from inside the wagon before travel. Each wagon has a fire detection and extinguishing system, with sensing of ions or ultraviolet radiation, smoke and gases that can trigger
halonThe haloalkanes are a group of chemical compounds derived from alkanes containing one or more halogens. They are a subset of the general class of halocarbons, although the distinction is not often made. Haloalkanes are widely used commercially and, consequently, are known under many chemical and...
gas to quench a fire. Since the Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) wagons are not covered, fire sensors are located on the loading wagon and in the tunnel itself. A 10 inches (25.4 cm) water main in the service tunnel provides water to the main tunnels at 125 metres (410 ft) intervals. The ventilation system can control smoke movement. Special arrival sidings exist to accept a train that is on fire, as the train is not allowed to stop whilst on fire in the tunnel. Eurotunnel has banned a wide range of hazardous goods from travelling in the tunnel. Two STTS vehicles with firefighting pods are on duty at all times, with a maximum delay of 10 minutes before they reach a burning train.
See also
- Strait of Gibraltar crossing
A Strait of Gibraltar crossing is a hypothetical bridge or tunnel spanning the Strait of Gibraltar that would connect Europe to Africa.The Spanish and Moroccan governments appointed a a to investigate the feasibility of linking the two continents...
- British Rail Class 373
The British Rail Class 373 or TGV-TMST train is an electric multiple unit that operates Eurostar's high-speed rail service between Britain, France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel...
- Irish Sea tunnel
An Irish Sea Tunnel is a proposed tunnel that would link the island of Ireland to Great Britain beneath the Irish Sea. It has been suggested in the past largely for political reasons. It would be a railway tunnel, similar to the Channel Tunnel beneath the English Channel...
- Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel
The Japan–Korea Undersea Tunnel is a proposed tunnel project to connect Japan with Republic of Korea via an undersea tunnel crossing the Korea Strait using the strait islands of Iki and Tsushima, a straight-line distance of approximately at its shortest.The proposal, under discussion...
- List of Rail megaprojects
- Samphire Hoe
Samphire Hoe is a new part of Kent, United Kingdom, consisting of reclaimed land made from 4.9 million cubic metres of chalk marl dug to create the Channel Tunnel, deposited on the seaward side of the famous White Cliffs of Dover. It is accessible by the public via single-track tunnel controlled by...
External links
{{Commons|Eurotunnel}}
{{Channel tunnel}}
{{Eurostar navbox}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2011}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2010}}