The Eurotunnel or Channel Tunnel (in French: Tunnel sous la Manche; in English: Channel Tunnel or Chunnel) is a railway tunnel, opened on May 6, 1994, that crosses the English Channel, linking France with the United Kingdom.[1] It is an important piece of international transport infrastructure. The journey can be made by private car (boarding the "Shuttle" shuttle train), or as a passenger on the Eurostar train, on a trip that lasts approximately 35 minutes between Coquelles (city of Calais) in France and Folkestone in the United Kingdom. It is the third longest tunnel in the world, only surpassed by the Seikan tunnel and the Gotthard tunnel, and the one with the longest underwater section in the world, with an average depth of 50 meters.
The tunnel is owned by the company Getlink, which is in charge of its operation. In 2013 it reached a turnover of 1,090,000,000 euros, exceeding the figure of 1,000,000,000 for the first time.[2].
Origins
Chronology
In 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining engineer, presented a proposal to excavate a tunnel under the English Channel, with lighting by oil lamps, horse-drawn carriages, and an artificial island located in the middle of the Channel for changing horses. His design envisaged a two-level bored tunnel, with the upper gallery used for transportation and the lower one to drain groundwater.[5]
In 1839, the French engineer Aimé Thomé de Gamond carried out the first geological and hydrographic studies of the Canal between Calais and Dover. He analyzed several projects, and in 1856 presented a proposal to Napoleon III to construct a railway tunnel excavated from Cape Gris-Nez to the eastern tip of Wear, with an intermediate port-ventilation shaft on the Varne sandbank.
In 1865, a deputation led by George Ward Hunt unsuccessfully proposed the idea of the tunnel to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, William Gladstone.[9]
In 1866, Henry Marc Brunel conducted a survey of the soil of the Strait of Dover. The results he obtained allowed him to demonstrate that the floor of the canal was composed of chalk, like the adjacent cliffs, and that it was therefore feasible to drill a tunnel.[10] For this study, he invented the gravity coring system, which is still used in geology.
Eurotunnel
Introduction
The Eurotunnel or Channel Tunnel (in French: Tunnel sous la Manche; in English: Channel Tunnel or Chunnel) is a railway tunnel, opened on May 6, 1994, that crosses the English Channel, linking France with the United Kingdom.[1] It is an important piece of international transport infrastructure. The journey can be made by private car (boarding the "Shuttle" shuttle train), or as a passenger on the Eurostar train, on a trip that lasts approximately 35 minutes between Coquelles (city of Calais) in France and Folkestone in the United Kingdom. It is the third longest tunnel in the world, only surpassed by the Seikan tunnel and the Gotthard tunnel, and the one with the longest underwater section in the world, with an average depth of 50 meters.
The tunnel is owned by the company Getlink, which is in charge of its operation. In 2013 it reached a turnover of 1,090,000,000 euros, exceeding the figure of 1,000,000,000 for the first time.[2].
Origins
Chronology
In 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining engineer, presented a proposal to excavate a tunnel under the English Channel, with lighting by oil lamps, horse-drawn carriages, and an artificial island located in the middle of the Channel for changing horses. His design envisaged a two-level bored tunnel, with the upper gallery used for transportation and the lower one to drain groundwater.[5]
In 1839, the French engineer Aimé Thomé de Gamond carried out the first geological and hydrographic studies of the Canal between Calais and Dover. He analyzed several projects, and in 1856 presented a proposal to Napoleon III to construct a railway tunnel excavated from Cape Gris-Nez to the eastern tip of Wear, with an intermediate port-ventilation shaft on the Varne sandbank.
In 1865, a deputation led by George Ward Hunt unsuccessfully proposed the idea of the tunnel to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, William Gladstone.[9]
Around 1866, William Low and John Hawkshaw promoted new projects for the tunnel,[11] but apart from preliminary geological studies,[12] none of them even got to the start of work.
In 1876 an official Anglo-French protocol was established to construct a railway tunnel across the Channel.
In 1881, the British railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin and the French contractor Alexandre Lavalley (who had participated in the Suez Canal works) were part of the "Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company", which began exploration work on both sides of the Canal.[13][14] From June 1882 to March 1883, British miners drilled through the chalk with their primitive tunnel boring machine a total of 1,840 meters (6,037 ft) of gallery,[15] while Lavalley used a similar machine to bore 1,669 meters (5,476 ft) from Sangatte on the French side.[16] However, the tunnel project to cross the English Channel was abandoned in 1883, despite initial success, due to fears raised by the British Army that an underwater tunnel could serve as a route to invade Great Britain.[15][17] Interestingly, this same TBM was used in 1883 to bore a railway ventilation tunnel (7 feet (2.1 m) in diameter and 6,750 feet (2,057.4 m) long) between Birkenhead and Liverpool, England, through the sandstones beneath the River Mersey.[18] These first sections of gallery were located more than a century later during the TransManche Link project.
A 1907 film, *The Channel Tunnel"), by pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès,[19] shows Edward VII of the United Kingdom and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the Channel.
In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference "Paris Peace Conference (1919)"), British Prime Minister David Lloyd George repeatedly mentioned the idea of the Channel Tunnel as a way to reassure France of Britain's willingness to defend it from another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously, and the proposal was forgotten.[20].
In the 1920s, Winston Churchill advocated for the Channel Tunnel, using that same name in his essay "Should Strategists Veto the Tunnel?" It was published on 27 July 1924 in the Weekly Dispatch and was vehemently opposed to the idea that the tunnel could be used by a continental enemy in an invasion of Britain. Churchill again expressed his enthusiasm for the project in an article for the Daily Mail on 12 February 1936: "Why not a Channel Tunnel?"[21]
There was another proposal in 1929, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Proponents of the tunnel estimated the construction cost at about $150,000,000. Engineers addressed the concerns of both nations' military leaders by designing two sinkholes, one near the coast of each country, that could allow the tunnel to be flooded at will to block it. But this did not appease military leaders or allay concerns about hordes of tourists disrupting British life.[22] The military's fears persisted throughout the Second World War. After the Battle of France, as part of preparing the response to a possible German invasion of Britain, a Royal Navy officer in the Miscellaneous Weapons Development Department calculated that Hitler could use slave labor to build two Channel tunnels in 18 months. The estimate sparked rumors that Germany had already begun excavating them.[23]
A British film from Gaumont Studios, The Tunnel&action=edit&redlink=1 "The Tunnel (1935 film) (not yet written)") (also called Transatlantic Tunnel), was released in 1935 as a science fiction project about the creation of a transatlantic tunnel. Within the film's fiction, it was briefly mentioned that its protagonist, Mr. McAllan, had successfully completed a tunnel under the English Channel in 1940, five years after the film's release.
By 1955, defense arguments had become less relevant due to the dominance of air power, and both the British and French governments supported technical and geological studies. In 1958 the work of 1881 was resumed in preparation for a geological study budgeted at 100,000 pounds commissioned by the Channel Tunnel Study Group. 30% of the funding came from Channel Tunnel Co Ltd, whose largest shareholder was the British Transport Commission as successor to the South Eastern Railway&action=edit&redlink=1 "South Eastern Railway (United Kingdom) (not yet drafted)").[24] In 1964 and 1965 a new, much more detailed geological study was carried out.[25].
Although the two countries agreed to build a tunnel in 1964, initial studies for Phase 1 and the signing of a second agreement to cover Phase 2 were delayed until 1973. The plan described a government-funded project to create two parallel galleries situated on either side of a service tunnel, with the idea of accommodating the transportation of automobiles in car transport cars. Construction began on both sides of the Canal in 1974.
On 20 January 1975, to the dismay of its French partners, the then British Labor Party canceled the project due to uncertainty over British membership of the European Economic Community, doubling of cost estimates and the general economic crisis of the time. By this time, the British TBM was ready and a 300 m long section of test gallery had been completed by the Ministry of Transport.[27] This short tunnel, called Adit A1, was eventually reused as a start and access point for tunnel operations from the British side, and remains an entry point to the service tunnel. Cancellation costs were estimated at £17,000,000.[26] On the French side, a tunnel boring machine had been installed underground in a short tunnel. It was there for 14 years, until 1988, when once sold, it was dismantled, refurbished and shipped to Turkey, where it was used to build the Moda tunnel for the Istanbul Sewer Plan.
Project start
In 1979 "Project Mouse-hole" was raised when the Conservatives came to power in Britain. The idea was to build a single-track railway tunnel with a service tunnel, but without terminals for the shuttles. The British government was not interested in funding the project, but British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not oppose a privately funded project, although she said she assumed it would be a tunnel for cars rather than trains. In 1981, Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand agreed to create a working group to evaluate a privately funded project. In June 1982, the Franco-British study group decided to design a double tunnel to accommodate conventional trains and a shuttle train service to transport road vehicles. In April 1985, promoters were invited to submit their proposals. Four projects were shortlisted:.
• - Channel Tunnel, a railway proposal based on the 1975 project, presented by Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M).
• - Eurobridge, a 35 km suspension bridge with a series of 5 km spans and the carriageways arranged in a closed tube.[28].
• - Euroroute, a 21 kilometer (13.0 mi) tunnel between artificial islands, which would be accessed by bridges.
• - Channel Expressway, a set of large diameter road tunnels with ventilation towers in the middle of the Channel.[27].
The cross-Channel ferry industry showed its opposition to the project through "Flexilink", an association created to defend its interests. In 1975 there had been no protest campaign against the fixed link, as one of the largest ferry operators (Sealink) was still state-owned. "Flexilink" continued to fight the construction of the tunnel in 1986 and 1987.[27] Public opinion was strongly in favor of the tunnel, but concerns about ventilation, accident management and the problem of possible driver distraction due to the monotony of a such a long journey, led to the project being awarded in January 1986 to the only preselected railway proposal, that of the Anglo-French group CTG/F-M.
Technical characteristics
The rail service through the Eurotunnel has two variants: the Eurostar train, for passengers, and the Shuttle train, which transports trucks, cars and motorcycles.
The tunnel has a length of 50.5 km, 39 of them underwater, making it the second longest underwater tunnel in the world, with an average depth of 40 meters, behind the Seikan Tunnel, whose length is 53 km, at a depth of 240 m.
The Eurotunnel is made up of three main routes:
• - Two 7.6 m diameter tunnels reserved for rail transport, one going and one returning (A).
• - A 4.8 m maintenance tunnel, prepared for the circulation of electric vehicles (B).
These three parts are joined every 375 m by other auxiliary transversal ducts (C), and every 250 m by ventilation ducts (D), which allow maintenance to be carried out and there to be an air flow to reduce the pressure, thus also preventing the spread of smoke in the event of fire, as well as the collision due to aerodynamic resistance when trains traveling at 140 km/h pass each other.
Advantages
• - The Eurostar high-speed train takes 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from London to Paris, and 1 hour and 57 minutes from London to Brussels.
• - Goods are transported by train rather than lorry or ferry across the English Channel, which is subject to possible adverse weather conditions or other factors.
• - Motorists enter transfer trains and can remain in their vehicles or walk while the train crosses the tunnel. The truck drivers put the truck into the cars, and a minibus takes them to the club car, where they have seats and food service.
There are doors between each car that are removed to allow the loading and circulation of cars, from the tail to the beginning of the trains, on two levels. These doors are closed when the train is loaded and reopened for unloading.
Construction
Work began in April 1988 on both banks and on December 1, 1990, the tunnel boring machines were found.
The tunnel boring machines used to excavate the tunnel were built by the French and British. With a cylindrical shape, the tunnel boring machine has several blades ("teeth") mounted on its front. The teeth are made of an extremely hard metal and as they rotate they penetrate the ground, creating space for the machine to continue moving forward. The drill used in the Eurotunnel was 8.78 m in diameter and 200 m in length, with a total weight of 11,000 tons.[30] It is capable of penetrating many types of terrain, from soft to rocky, advancing 20 km without interruption.
Creating tunnels requires a solid understanding of geology and selecting the best rock strata to build them through. Features of the English Tunnel include:
• - Crete "Crete (rock)") on the cliffs on both sides of the Channel, without major faults.
• - Four geological strata, formed by marine sediments between 90 and 100 million years old. The upper two strata are formed by permeable chalk, above a third layer of slightly permeable chalk and a fourth impermeable layer of clay (from the Lower Cretaceous period). Between these last two strata, there is a thin layer of calcareous and gluconitic sand.
• - The layer of blue chalk (in French: "craie bleue") between 25 and 30 m thick, located in the lowest lower third of this material, was a priori the most suitable stratum of the Canal bed to excavate a tunnel. It is a relatively easy material to drill, requiring minimal support, and with a clay content of 30-40% that provides it with impermeability to groundwater.
The average depth of the Canal bed is 54 m, with a maximum of 180 m.[31] In the tunnel area, it did not exceed 70 m, so that the maximum depth of the tunnel grade with respect to sea level is 107.3 meters.[32].
Concession company
The construction of the tunnel was financed by private companies, without state intervention, in exchange for the concession of its exploitation until 2052. A study carried out in 1984 by French and British banks considered the project viable. The British government, led by Margaret Thatcher, opposed public financing of the project, a position agreed with the French government in the Treaty of Canterbury.
The cost was 16 billion euros. The coordination difficulties between contracted and subcontracted companies and the technical difficulty of the project considerably increased costs.
Eurotunnel is a private company concessionaire of the project. It manages rail transport, collecting tolls from the railway companies that use the tunnel and exploiting freight and passenger traffic with its own means. Demand has been lower than expected, mainly due to low-cost airlines. Based on a forecast of 30 million passengers and 15 million tonnes of goods per year, in 2013 18.8 million passengers and 19 million tonnes of goods were transported, including trains (10.1 and 1.3, respectively) and ferries.
Entry of other operators
Following the change in safety regulations by the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority (CTSA) for passenger trains in the Eurotunnel, discussed (11/16/2009) with manufacturers and operators,[33] it granted the German operator DB in June 2013 Part B of the Safety Certificate, which recognizes that there is a Safety Management System that satisfies the community regulations for this section, that is, that it complies with the safety and organization procedures, which entitles DB to provide services through the Eurotunnel with any approved material.[34]
This has nothing to do with the supposed homologation of the Velaro D trains since, in addition, the evacuation tests in the Channel Tunnel, carried out in October 2010, were carried out with a 3M ICE, the same one that was exhibited at London's St. Pancras station.[35]
Part A of the certificate confirms that the Railway Company has a Safety Management System that satisfies European and national standards and requirements, in a harmonized manner throughout the European railway system; while Part B confirms the application of said Safety Management System to circulate through a certain infrastructure (a point-to-point route along a line). The Certificate is valid for five years, renewable for equal successive periods, provided that the regulatory conditions required for its granting are met.[36].
Subsequently, the UKBA (The UK Border Agency) explained that there will be no controls outside of the current ones (Lille, Paris and Brussels), and that it does not like DB's suggestion that the controls be done on board the trains. For its part, SNCF is doubling the capacity of the passport control area at Lille-Europe station.[37]
Following this news, in addition to the difficulties in homologating the Velaro D even in Germany, DB has parked its plans to reach London, at least in this decade.[38].
Eurostar announced a service to Marseille for 2015[39] that will require a 1h 43m stop in Lille (bound to London) for baggage and passport control.[40].
Traffic volume
The first column represents the number of passengers on Eurostar trains, the sixth and seventh columns represent an official estimate on transport on shuttle trains.
Fire incidents
There are several incidents of this nature that have occurred in the Eurotunnel. Since its inauguration, four fires have occurred:
• - The first occurred in November 1996, when a truck caught fire, cutting off the tunnel for several months.
• - The second of them took place in August 2006, for the same reason, but this time without causing any damage.
• - Another occurred on September 11, 2008, when a freight train caught fire, interrupting all traffic and passenger service.
• - Finally, the last of the fires known so far occurred on January 17, 2015, when a truck caught fire at the French end of the tunnel. The accident forced the Eurotunnel to close for the entire day.
• - Annex:Large tunnels.
• - Eurostar.
• - TGV-TMST (Eurostar).
• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category on Eurotunnel.
[9] ↑ Gladstone, William (1902). «The Channel Tunnel». En A. W. Hutton & H. J. Cohen, ed. The Speeches of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh And Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. The Speeches And Public Addresses of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. X. London: Methuen And Company.
[10] ↑ Desmond T. Donovan, « Henry Marc Brunel: The first submarine geological survey and the invention of the gravity corer », Marine Geology, vol. 5, no 1, février 1967, p. 5–14 (doi 10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5). - [https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5](https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5)
[11] ↑ Beaumont, Martin (2015). Sir John Hawkshaw 1811-1891. The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society www.lyrs.org.uk. pp. 126-129. ISBN 978-0-9559467-7-6.
[12] ↑ «Things Worth Recording about Steam Navigation». [The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.). 9 de octubre de 1866. p. 3. Consultado el 26 de abril de 2014 – vía National Library of Australia.: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8842035
[16] ↑ Wilson, Jeremy; Spick, Jérôme (1994). Eurotunnel: The Illustrated Journey. New York, NY, USA: Harper Collins. pp. 14-21. ISBN 0-00-255539-5.
[17] ↑ Terry Gourvish, The Official History of Britain and the Channel Tunnel (Abington, England: Routledge, 2006), Chapter 1, § 2: The commercial possibilities: Lord Richard Grosvenor, Sir Edward Watkin and the 'Manchester to Paris Railroad'.
[18] ↑ West, 1988, p. 248.
[19] ↑ Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 219, ISBN 9782732437323 .
[21] ↑ Churchill, Winston (1976). The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol I, Churchill at War (Centenary edición). Library of Imperial History. pp. 260-264 and 357-359. ISBN 0903988429.
[28] ↑ Hamer, Mick (2 de mayo de 1985). «The five cross-Channel contenders». Across the Channel by 2020?. New Scientist (Reed Business Information): 18. Consultado el 12 de octubre de 2019 – vía Google Books.: https://books.google.com/books?id=zhjOPdmyz1wC&pg=PA18
[32] ↑ Collectif, Eurotunnel : 15 ans d'évolutions techniques, HC éditions, coll. «revue générale des chemins de fer» (no 206), juin 2011 (ISSN 0035-3183).
In 1866, Henry Marc Brunel conducted a survey of the soil of the Strait of Dover. The results he obtained allowed him to demonstrate that the floor of the canal was composed of chalk, like the adjacent cliffs, and that it was therefore feasible to drill a tunnel.[10] For this study, he invented the gravity coring system, which is still used in geology.
Around 1866, William Low and John Hawkshaw promoted new projects for the tunnel,[11] but apart from preliminary geological studies,[12] none of them even got to the start of work.
In 1876 an official Anglo-French protocol was established to construct a railway tunnel across the Channel.
In 1881, the British railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin and the French contractor Alexandre Lavalley (who had participated in the Suez Canal works) were part of the "Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company", which began exploration work on both sides of the Canal.[13][14] From June 1882 to March 1883, British miners drilled through the chalk with their primitive tunnel boring machine a total of 1,840 meters (6,037 ft) of gallery,[15] while Lavalley used a similar machine to bore 1,669 meters (5,476 ft) from Sangatte on the French side.[16] However, the tunnel project to cross the English Channel was abandoned in 1883, despite initial success, due to fears raised by the British Army that an underwater tunnel could serve as a route to invade Great Britain.[15][17] Interestingly, this same TBM was used in 1883 to bore a railway ventilation tunnel (7 feet (2.1 m) in diameter and 6,750 feet (2,057.4 m) long) between Birkenhead and Liverpool, England, through the sandstones beneath the River Mersey.[18] These first sections of gallery were located more than a century later during the TransManche Link project.
A 1907 film, *The Channel Tunnel"), by pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès,[19] shows Edward VII of the United Kingdom and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the Channel.
In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference "Paris Peace Conference (1919)"), British Prime Minister David Lloyd George repeatedly mentioned the idea of the Channel Tunnel as a way to reassure France of Britain's willingness to defend it from another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously, and the proposal was forgotten.[20].
In the 1920s, Winston Churchill advocated for the Channel Tunnel, using that same name in his essay "Should Strategists Veto the Tunnel?" It was published on 27 July 1924 in the Weekly Dispatch and was vehemently opposed to the idea that the tunnel could be used by a continental enemy in an invasion of Britain. Churchill again expressed his enthusiasm for the project in an article for the Daily Mail on 12 February 1936: "Why not a Channel Tunnel?"[21]
There was another proposal in 1929, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Proponents of the tunnel estimated the construction cost at about $150,000,000. Engineers addressed the concerns of both nations' military leaders by designing two sinkholes, one near the coast of each country, that could allow the tunnel to be flooded at will to block it. But this did not appease military leaders or allay concerns about hordes of tourists disrupting British life.[22] The military's fears persisted throughout the Second World War. After the Battle of France, as part of preparing the response to a possible German invasion of Britain, a Royal Navy officer in the Miscellaneous Weapons Development Department calculated that Hitler could use slave labor to build two Channel tunnels in 18 months. The estimate sparked rumors that Germany had already begun excavating them.[23]
A British film from Gaumont Studios, The Tunnel&action=edit&redlink=1 "The Tunnel (1935 film) (not yet written)") (also called Transatlantic Tunnel), was released in 1935 as a science fiction project about the creation of a transatlantic tunnel. Within the film's fiction, it was briefly mentioned that its protagonist, Mr. McAllan, had successfully completed a tunnel under the English Channel in 1940, five years after the film's release.
By 1955, defense arguments had become less relevant due to the dominance of air power, and both the British and French governments supported technical and geological studies. In 1958 the work of 1881 was resumed in preparation for a geological study budgeted at 100,000 pounds commissioned by the Channel Tunnel Study Group. 30% of the funding came from Channel Tunnel Co Ltd, whose largest shareholder was the British Transport Commission as successor to the South Eastern Railway&action=edit&redlink=1 "South Eastern Railway (United Kingdom) (not yet drafted)").[24] In 1964 and 1965 a new, much more detailed geological study was carried out.[25].
Although the two countries agreed to build a tunnel in 1964, initial studies for Phase 1 and the signing of a second agreement to cover Phase 2 were delayed until 1973. The plan described a government-funded project to create two parallel galleries situated on either side of a service tunnel, with the idea of accommodating the transportation of automobiles in car transport cars. Construction began on both sides of the Canal in 1974.
On 20 January 1975, to the dismay of its French partners, the then British Labor Party canceled the project due to uncertainty over British membership of the European Economic Community, doubling of cost estimates and the general economic crisis of the time. By this time, the British TBM was ready and a 300 m long section of test gallery had been completed by the Ministry of Transport.[27] This short tunnel, called Adit A1, was eventually reused as a start and access point for tunnel operations from the British side, and remains an entry point to the service tunnel. Cancellation costs were estimated at £17,000,000.[26] On the French side, a tunnel boring machine had been installed underground in a short tunnel. It was there for 14 years, until 1988, when once sold, it was dismantled, refurbished and shipped to Turkey, where it was used to build the Moda tunnel for the Istanbul Sewer Plan.
Project start
In 1979 "Project Mouse-hole" was raised when the Conservatives came to power in Britain. The idea was to build a single-track railway tunnel with a service tunnel, but without terminals for the shuttles. The British government was not interested in funding the project, but British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not oppose a privately funded project, although she said she assumed it would be a tunnel for cars rather than trains. In 1981, Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand agreed to create a working group to evaluate a privately funded project. In June 1982, the Franco-British study group decided to design a double tunnel to accommodate conventional trains and a shuttle train service to transport road vehicles. In April 1985, promoters were invited to submit their proposals. Four projects were shortlisted:.
• - Channel Tunnel, a railway proposal based on the 1975 project, presented by Channel Tunnel Group/France–Manche (CTG/F–M).
• - Eurobridge, a 35 km suspension bridge with a series of 5 km spans and the carriageways arranged in a closed tube.[28].
• - Euroroute, a 21 kilometer (13.0 mi) tunnel between artificial islands, which would be accessed by bridges.
• - Channel Expressway, a set of large diameter road tunnels with ventilation towers in the middle of the Channel.[27].
The cross-Channel ferry industry showed its opposition to the project through "Flexilink", an association created to defend its interests. In 1975 there had been no protest campaign against the fixed link, as one of the largest ferry operators (Sealink) was still state-owned. "Flexilink" continued to fight the construction of the tunnel in 1986 and 1987.[27] Public opinion was strongly in favor of the tunnel, but concerns about ventilation, accident management and the problem of possible driver distraction due to the monotony of a such a long journey, led to the project being awarded in January 1986 to the only preselected railway proposal, that of the Anglo-French group CTG/F-M.
Technical characteristics
The rail service through the Eurotunnel has two variants: the Eurostar train, for passengers, and the Shuttle train, which transports trucks, cars and motorcycles.
The tunnel has a length of 50.5 km, 39 of them underwater, making it the second longest underwater tunnel in the world, with an average depth of 40 meters, behind the Seikan Tunnel, whose length is 53 km, at a depth of 240 m.
The Eurotunnel is made up of three main routes:
• - Two 7.6 m diameter tunnels reserved for rail transport, one going and one returning (A).
• - A 4.8 m maintenance tunnel, prepared for the circulation of electric vehicles (B).
These three parts are joined every 375 m by other auxiliary transversal ducts (C), and every 250 m by ventilation ducts (D), which allow maintenance to be carried out and there to be an air flow to reduce the pressure, thus also preventing the spread of smoke in the event of fire, as well as the collision due to aerodynamic resistance when trains traveling at 140 km/h pass each other.
Advantages
• - The Eurostar high-speed train takes 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from London to Paris, and 1 hour and 57 minutes from London to Brussels.
• - Goods are transported by train rather than lorry or ferry across the English Channel, which is subject to possible adverse weather conditions or other factors.
• - Motorists enter transfer trains and can remain in their vehicles or walk while the train crosses the tunnel. The truck drivers put the truck into the cars, and a minibus takes them to the club car, where they have seats and food service.
There are doors between each car that are removed to allow the loading and circulation of cars, from the tail to the beginning of the trains, on two levels. These doors are closed when the train is loaded and reopened for unloading.
Construction
Work began in April 1988 on both banks and on December 1, 1990, the tunnel boring machines were found.
The tunnel boring machines used to excavate the tunnel were built by the French and British. With a cylindrical shape, the tunnel boring machine has several blades ("teeth") mounted on its front. The teeth are made of an extremely hard metal and as they rotate they penetrate the ground, creating space for the machine to continue moving forward. The drill used in the Eurotunnel was 8.78 m in diameter and 200 m in length, with a total weight of 11,000 tons.[30] It is capable of penetrating many types of terrain, from soft to rocky, advancing 20 km without interruption.
Creating tunnels requires a solid understanding of geology and selecting the best rock strata to build them through. Features of the English Tunnel include:
• - Crete "Crete (rock)") on the cliffs on both sides of the Channel, without major faults.
• - Four geological strata, formed by marine sediments between 90 and 100 million years old. The upper two strata are formed by permeable chalk, above a third layer of slightly permeable chalk and a fourth impermeable layer of clay (from the Lower Cretaceous period). Between these last two strata, there is a thin layer of calcareous and gluconitic sand.
• - The layer of blue chalk (in French: "craie bleue") between 25 and 30 m thick, located in the lowest lower third of this material, was a priori the most suitable stratum of the Canal bed to excavate a tunnel. It is a relatively easy material to drill, requiring minimal support, and with a clay content of 30-40% that provides it with impermeability to groundwater.
The average depth of the Canal bed is 54 m, with a maximum of 180 m.[31] In the tunnel area, it did not exceed 70 m, so that the maximum depth of the tunnel grade with respect to sea level is 107.3 meters.[32].
Concession company
The construction of the tunnel was financed by private companies, without state intervention, in exchange for the concession of its exploitation until 2052. A study carried out in 1984 by French and British banks considered the project viable. The British government, led by Margaret Thatcher, opposed public financing of the project, a position agreed with the French government in the Treaty of Canterbury.
The cost was 16 billion euros. The coordination difficulties between contracted and subcontracted companies and the technical difficulty of the project considerably increased costs.
Eurotunnel is a private company concessionaire of the project. It manages rail transport, collecting tolls from the railway companies that use the tunnel and exploiting freight and passenger traffic with its own means. Demand has been lower than expected, mainly due to low-cost airlines. Based on a forecast of 30 million passengers and 15 million tonnes of goods per year, in 2013 18.8 million passengers and 19 million tonnes of goods were transported, including trains (10.1 and 1.3, respectively) and ferries.
Entry of other operators
Following the change in safety regulations by the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority (CTSA) for passenger trains in the Eurotunnel, discussed (11/16/2009) with manufacturers and operators,[33] it granted the German operator DB in June 2013 Part B of the Safety Certificate, which recognizes that there is a Safety Management System that satisfies the community regulations for this section, that is, that it complies with the safety and organization procedures, which entitles DB to provide services through the Eurotunnel with any approved material.[34]
This has nothing to do with the supposed homologation of the Velaro D trains since, in addition, the evacuation tests in the Channel Tunnel, carried out in October 2010, were carried out with a 3M ICE, the same one that was exhibited at London's St. Pancras station.[35]
Part A of the certificate confirms that the Railway Company has a Safety Management System that satisfies European and national standards and requirements, in a harmonized manner throughout the European railway system; while Part B confirms the application of said Safety Management System to circulate through a certain infrastructure (a point-to-point route along a line). The Certificate is valid for five years, renewable for equal successive periods, provided that the regulatory conditions required for its granting are met.[36].
Subsequently, the UKBA (The UK Border Agency) explained that there will be no controls outside of the current ones (Lille, Paris and Brussels), and that it does not like DB's suggestion that the controls be done on board the trains. For its part, SNCF is doubling the capacity of the passport control area at Lille-Europe station.[37]
Following this news, in addition to the difficulties in homologating the Velaro D even in Germany, DB has parked its plans to reach London, at least in this decade.[38].
Eurostar announced a service to Marseille for 2015[39] that will require a 1h 43m stop in Lille (bound to London) for baggage and passport control.[40].
Traffic volume
The first column represents the number of passengers on Eurostar trains, the sixth and seventh columns represent an official estimate on transport on shuttle trains.
Fire incidents
There are several incidents of this nature that have occurred in the Eurotunnel. Since its inauguration, four fires have occurred:
• - The first occurred in November 1996, when a truck caught fire, cutting off the tunnel for several months.
• - The second of them took place in August 2006, for the same reason, but this time without causing any damage.
• - Another occurred on September 11, 2008, when a freight train caught fire, interrupting all traffic and passenger service.
• - Finally, the last of the fires known so far occurred on January 17, 2015, when a truck caught fire at the French end of the tunnel. The accident forced the Eurotunnel to close for the entire day.
• - Annex:Large tunnels.
• - Eurostar.
• - TGV-TMST (Eurostar).
• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category on Eurotunnel.
[9] ↑ Gladstone, William (1902). «The Channel Tunnel». En A. W. Hutton & H. J. Cohen, ed. The Speeches of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh And Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. The Speeches And Public Addresses of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. X. London: Methuen And Company.
[10] ↑ Desmond T. Donovan, « Henry Marc Brunel: The first submarine geological survey and the invention of the gravity corer », Marine Geology, vol. 5, no 1, février 1967, p. 5–14 (doi 10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5). - [https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5](https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(67)90065-5)
[11] ↑ Beaumont, Martin (2015). Sir John Hawkshaw 1811-1891. The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society www.lyrs.org.uk. pp. 126-129. ISBN 978-0-9559467-7-6.
[12] ↑ «Things Worth Recording about Steam Navigation». [The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.). 9 de octubre de 1866. p. 3. Consultado el 26 de abril de 2014 – vía National Library of Australia.: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8842035
[16] ↑ Wilson, Jeremy; Spick, Jérôme (1994). Eurotunnel: The Illustrated Journey. New York, NY, USA: Harper Collins. pp. 14-21. ISBN 0-00-255539-5.
[17] ↑ Terry Gourvish, The Official History of Britain and the Channel Tunnel (Abington, England: Routledge, 2006), Chapter 1, § 2: The commercial possibilities: Lord Richard Grosvenor, Sir Edward Watkin and the 'Manchester to Paris Railroad'.
[18] ↑ West, 1988, p. 248.
[19] ↑ Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 219, ISBN 9782732437323 .
[21] ↑ Churchill, Winston (1976). The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol I, Churchill at War (Centenary edición). Library of Imperial History. pp. 260-264 and 357-359. ISBN 0903988429.
[28] ↑ Hamer, Mick (2 de mayo de 1985). «The five cross-Channel contenders». Across the Channel by 2020?. New Scientist (Reed Business Information): 18. Consultado el 12 de octubre de 2019 – vía Google Books.: https://books.google.com/books?id=zhjOPdmyz1wC&pg=PA18
[32] ↑ Collectif, Eurotunnel : 15 ans d'évolutions techniques, HC éditions, coll. «revue générale des chemins de fer» (no 206), juin 2011 (ISSN 0035-3183).