Channel Tunnel, France. English Channel: the longest underwater tunnel in the world, which turned out to be unprofitable Transport incident in the English Channel
The construction of a tunnel that would connect mainland Europe and island Great Britain was dreamed of at the beginning of the 19th century. But the grandiose plan to build the world’s longest underwater railway tunnel was realized only in 1994. But, strange as it may seem, the joy of its creators from the construction quickly gave way to financial disappointment: the tunnel brought only losses.
The project to build a railway tunnel under the English Channel, or Eurotunnel, as it is also called, started in 1973. But due to lack of funding, direct construction began only in 1987. The idea was unique in terms of the complexity of the design itself and the technical implementation of underwater drilling.
To implement the railway connection, it was decided to build two tunnels through which trains would run, and one tunnel for maintenance and access in case of emergency situations. In this case, the drilling of tunnels had to take place at a depth of more than 50 meters under the bottom of the English Channel. This was due to the fact that it is at this depth that Cretaceous deposits, represented mainly by sandstone, lie. It was easier and faster to drill through them, so the tunnel itself is not strictly horizontal, but follows the bend of the sedimentary rock layer.
Drilling of passages was carried out simultaneously from two banks: British and French. The diameter of the central tunnel, which is intended for line maintenance, is 4.8 m, and the diameters of the main lines where the railway tracks pass are 7.6 m. All tunnel walls are reinforced with 45 cm thick concrete. The service tunnel is connected to the main tracks by regular crossings through every 370 meters.
The tunnel route was laid using high-precision satellite equipment, and the drilling direction was set using a laser beam. However, when the French and British builders met, it turned out that the error was about 30 centimeters in the horizontal direction, and the vertical deviations were insignificant.
In May 1994, the Eurotunnel was inaugurated, and the festive event was personally attended by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and French President Francois Mitterrand. The Channel Tunnel, which connects Calais in France with Folkestone in Britain, carries passenger and freight trains, as well as shuttle trains carrying trucks and cars. The length of the tunnel is 50.5 kilometers, and 39 kilometers of track are located directly under water. Trains cross the English Channel in 20-35 minutes (depending on the brand of train) at an average speed of 160 km/h.
But, despite the significance of the Eurotunnel and its obvious necessity, the grandiose Franco-British project turned out to be unprofitable. This was influenced by the policy of reducing prices by alternative carriers, which was carried out immediately after the opening of the tunnel, and by emergency situations that repeatedly occurred underground. And although the company operating the tunnel periodically announces annual profits, it does not bring stable income to its owners.
The North and South tunnels were completed on May 22, 1991 and June 28, 1991, respectively. Equipment installation work followed. On May 6, 1994, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and French President François Mitterrand officially opened the tunnel.
The Eurotunnel is a complex engineering structure, including two circular track tunnels with an internal diameter of 7.6 meters, located at a distance of 30 meters from each other, and a service tunnel with a diameter of 4.8 meters located between them.
The journey from Paris to London takes two hours and 15 minutes, and from Brussels to London two hours. Moreover, the train stays in the tunnel itself for no more than 35 minutes. Eurostar has carried more than 150 million passengers since 1994, and passenger numbers have been growing steadily over the past decade.
In 2014, 10.4 million passengers used Eurostar services.
The European Union has approved the takeover of Eurostar by the French railway operator SNCF. Once the deal is completed, SNCF will have to allow competing firms to fly the same routes.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
The Channel Tunnel, one of the wonders of modern engineering, I first learned about it from the magazine “Technology for Youth”, in 1988, or a little later. The tunnel was just under construction at that time, and I, a Soviet “October” from the Urals, did not even imagine that I would one day ride through this very English Channel. To be fair, it must be said that the tunnel connecting Britain and France is not the longest underwater tunnel in the world; it was surpassed by Seikan in Japan, leading to the island of Hokkaido. The European tunnel is 50 kilometers long, and the Japanese one is 55. It’s just that the European tunnel is, for obvious reasons, more “promoted”. Contrary to the popular belief that the tunnel contains both a highway and a railway, in fact there are only rails there; there is no road through the tunnel. It is impossible to drive your car through the Channel Tunnel; your car will simply be loaded onto a freight train that will take you in the right direction. Buses and heavy-duty trucks will also enter there.
Train travel from London to Brussels and Paris starts from Pancras station, you can buy a ticket from a machine on the spot, or buy it in advance on the Eurostar website. It’s better to buy in advance; it will be significantly cheaper, sometimes up to 50-60 euros. The vast majority of people arrive at the station 30-40 minutes before the train departs and have printed electronic tickets in their hands. You apply this ticket to the reader and enter the control area -
Yes, you guessed it, French (Schengen) passport control is carried out right at London train station. The logic is simple: if you don’t have a Schengen visa, then it’s easier to “turn it in” right here, rather than take it to France and then think about how to send it back. Exactly the same system on the French side, where when the train departs from Paris/Brussels to the UK, the British check your passports at Brussels and Paris stations -
Then follow the signs to the desired platform, in principle everything is clear -
Two trains leave 3 minutes apart, one to Paris, the other to Brussels -
My train is Brussels -
Friends, you were probably waiting for a lot of photos from the Channel Tunnel? But they do not exist and cannot exist. Do you know what crossing a tunnel looks like? First, just starting from London, the train picks up enormous speed (up to 330 km/h) and in half an hour “flies” to the coast, where it goes into a tunnel and rushes in pitch darkness under the bottom of the strait for another fifteen minutes. And then it takes off on the French side. Absolutely nothing is visible and there is absolutely nothing to photograph.
Already at the entrance to the city of Calais you see double rows of fences with barbed wire stretching along the line. They perform two tasks: the first, of course, is the safety of the tunnel itself (imagine a version of “September 11” under the English Channel, this is the plot for a Hollywood disaster blogbuster, how the tunnel flies up into the air and the depths of the sea absorb the trains, and no tearful Leonardo Di Caprio will not save), and the second reason is more prosaic - illegal migrants. There are tens of thousands of them on the French side of the English Channel and they are all trying to break into Great Britain at any cost. Often, illegal immigrants who climbed through the fence and ran into the tunnel are hit by trains.
Train station in the French city of Calais -
Don't think that the train is running empty or anything like that. It’s just that I photographed it after arriving in Brussels, when the passengers got off the platform. In fact, the trains are full to capacity!
Actually, the final station, Brussels-Midi -
Eurotunnel, Channel Tunnel(French tunnel sous la Manche, English Channel Tunnel, also sometimes simply Eurotunnel listen)) is a double-track railway tunnel approximately 51 km long, of which 39 km pass under the English Channel. Connects continental Europe with the UK by rail. Thanks to the tunnel, it became possible to visit London from Paris in just 2 hours 15 minutes; In the tunnel itself, trains take from 20 to 35 minutes. It was inaugurated on May 6, 1994.
The Eurotunnel is the third longest railway tunnel in the world. The longer ones are the Seikan Tunnel (length 53.85 km) and the Gotthard Tunnel (length 57.1 km). However, the Eurotunnel holds records for its length under water - 39 km (for comparison, the underwater segment of Seikan is 23.3 km), as well as for being the longest international tunnel.
The Eurotunnel operator is Eurostar.
History of origin
The idea of building a tunnel under the English Channel arose at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.
According to the project, the tunnel was supposed to connect two cities: Calais on the French side and Folkestone on the English side (this route is not the shortest possible). It was supposed to dig in an easily pliable chalk geological layer, so the tunnel had to run deeper than planned, about 50 meters below the bottom of the strait, and the southern part should run deeper than the northern one. Because of this, the French first had to build a shaft 50 m in diameter and 60 m deep to reach the sandstone.
Construction
During operation, these machines simultaneously reinforced the walls with concrete segments, forming one and a half meter rings encircling the tunnel shaft. Each ring required an average of 50 minutes to install. British machines on average drilled about 150 meters per week, while French ones - 110 due to different machine designs and drilling conditions.
A laser positioning system was used to accurately align the tunnel parts under construction. Thanks to this system, both sides met at the intended point on December 1, 1990, at a depth of 40 meters from the bottom of the strait. The error was 0.358 meters horizontally and 0.058 meters vertically. In total, the British side completed 84 km of tunnel, and the French side - 69 km. British and French drillers did the last meters of the tunnel manually - using picks and shovels. After this, the main tunnels were connected and the British tunneling shields were taken to underground depots, and the French ones were dismantled and removed from the tunnel.
To guide the machines, the operator looked at computer screens and video monitors. Before the tunnel work began, satellite observatories helped calculate the exact path in every detail. Thin drills were used to probe samples of lime clay, showing which direction to go for more than 150 meters. A laser beam directed at a light-sensitive point on the combine helped the driver choose the right direction.
6-8 km from the coast, tunneling machines built passages under the English Channel, along which, when necessary, trains could be transferred from one tunnel to another. Every 375 meters, teams of tunnelers, equipped with small-sized equipment, laid passages to connect the main tunnels with service ones.
Pressure reduction channels were installed in the arch above the service tunnel, which connected the two main tunnels.
The project was completed in 7 years by 13 thousand workers and engineers.
Safety system
The Eurotunnel consists of three tunnels - two main ones, with a track for trains traveling north and south, and one small service tunnel. The service tunnel has passages every 375 meters that connect it with the main ones. It is designed for access to the main tunnels of maintenance personnel and emergency evacuation of people in case of danger.
Every 250 meters, both main tunnels are connected to each other by a special ventilation system located on top of the service tunnel. This air lock system eliminates the piston effect created by moving trains by distributing air flows into an adjacent tunnel.
All three tunnels have two interchanges, allowing trains to move freely between the tunnels.
Transport system
TGV line built for Eurotunnel LGV Nord Europe, thanks to which you can get from Paris to London in 2 hours 15 minutes.
Eurostar trains travel through the tunnel itself in 20 minutes, and Shuttle trains in 35 minutes.
There are four types of trains on the Eurotunnel line:
- TGV Eurostar high-speed passenger trains operating between London St Pancras railway station, Paris Gare du Nord ( Gare du Nord) and the Midi/Zuid station in Brussels with stops in Ashford, Calais and Lille.
- passenger shuttle trains Eurotunnel Shuttle transporting buses, cars and vans between Sangatte and Folkestone. Thanks to a special loading system, the entire process of entering a car into a carriage takes no more than eight minutes, while passengers remain inside their cars.
- freight trains Eurotunnel Shuttle with open cars in which trucks are transported, while the drivers themselves ride in a separate car.
- freight trains. These trains can carry a variety of cargo and containers between mainland Europe and the UK.
Emergencies
The Eurotunnel's security system has been tested eight times in real emergency situations.
November 18, 1996
The first fire occurred in the tunnel - a shuttle train carrying trucks caught fire. 34 people from the burning train, mostly car drivers, were evacuated into the service tunnel by the arriving French rescue service. Eight victims were taken out of the tunnel in ambulances. The rest were evacuated by another train traveling in the opposite direction. The fire brigade put out the fire for several hours, battling low water pressure in the fire extinguishing system, a strong draft in the ventilation and high temperatures.
200 meters of the tunnel were seriously damaged, another 200 meters were partially damaged. Some sections of the tunnel were burned through 50 mm (the thickness of the concrete ring enclosing the tunnel is 450 mm). The last cars and locomotive of the train were completely disabled.
All victims subsequently fully recovered. There were no casualties, mainly due to the design of the tunnel and the coordinated work of the security services of France and Great Britain.
The Eurotunnel was reopened three days later, on November 21, but only one tunnel was open and only for freight trains: safety rules prohibited passenger transportation during emergencies. They were resumed only on December 4th. The Eurotunnel became fully operational on January 7, 1997.
October 10, 2001
One of the trains suddenly stopped in the middle of the tunnel. Panic arose among the passengers, many were susceptible to attacks of claustrophobia. People spent about five hours underground until they were evacuated through a service tunnel.
August 21, 2006
One of the trucks transported by the shuttle train caught fire. Traffic through the tunnel was suspended for several hours.
September 11, 2008
A fire occurred in the French section of the tunnel - in one of the carriages of a freight train traveling from Great Britain to France. The train was transporting trucks. There were 32 people in it: mostly drivers accompanying their cars. All people were evacuated. As a result of the fire, 14 people were hospitalized, suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning or receiving minor injuries during the evacuation. The tunnel continued to burn all night and even in the morning. In the UK, Kent saw huge traffic jams as police blocked roads to prevent vehicles from driving close to tunnel entrances.
After this accident, traffic in the tunnel was fully restored only on February 23, 2009.
December 18, 2009
Due to the failure of the tunnel's power supply system as a result of a sharp temperature change and snowfall in northern France, five trains stopped in the tunnel.
The breakdowns occurred due to the fact that the trains were not ready for operation in winter conditions; their conductive lines and undercar space were not sufficiently protected. Eurostar noted that all trains undergo annual maintenance taking into account cold weather, but the measures taken were not enough.
January 7, 2010
A Eurostar passenger train carrying 260 passengers from Brussels to London was stuck in the Channel Tunnel for two hours. Teams of specialists were sent to the train, as well as an auxiliary locomotive, which took the faulty train in tow. Representatives of the Eurotunnel company stated that the cause of the breakdown of the train was snow. It got into the train's electrical equipment compartments and melted after entering the tunnel.
March 27, 2014
Train traffic through the tunnel was disrupted due to a fire in a building located next to the entrance to the tunnel on the British side. Four Eurostar trains were returned to their departure points in London, Paris and Brussels. The cause of the incident was a lightning strike. There were no casualties.
January 17, 2015
Train traffic was stopped due to a truck that caught fire in a tunnel near the entrance to it from France. All trains that entered the line were returned to the stations due to smoke. There were no casualties.
This was the fourth time since the start of operation of the Eurotunnel that it was closed due to trucks catching fire on the train platform.
Illegal immigrants
The tunnel has become a relatively easy way for illegal immigrants to enter the UK, where social policy is favorable to visiting foreigners.
On the night of 28–29 July 2015, approximately two thousand immigrants attempted to enter the UK illegally from France through the tunnel. This incident was the largest attempt by illegal migrants to cross the English Channel to enter the UK illegally. According to TASS [ ], in the vicinity of Calais, about 10 thousand immigrants were camped, hoping to illegally cross into the UK.
Financial performance indicators
The contribution of private funding to such a complex project was impressive. £45 million was raised through CTG/F-M, £770 million through a public offering, £206 million from private institutional investors and a syndicated bank loan of up to £5 billion. The estimated cost of the project in 1985 was £2.6 billion. By the end of construction, actual costs amounted to £4.65 billion due to increased safety and environmental requirements for the tunnel [ ] . According to other estimates, a total of about £10 billion was spent on the Eurotunnel (adjusted for inflation).
The Eurotunnel is a grandiose project of the 20th century, which has not yet paid off financially.
On 8 April 2008, Eurotunnel announced an annual profit for the first time in its existence (since 1986), made possible by a large-scale debt restructuring program. The company reported a net profit of one million euros ($1.6 million) for 2007.
In 2008, Eurotunnel operator Eurostar managed to make a profit of 40 million euros.
In 2009, the company paid dividends for the first time since its founding.
In 2010, Eurostar's loss amounted to 58 million euros, which was caused, among other things, by the consequences of the global economic crisis.
In 2011, the company, according to BBC News, made a profit of 11 million euros, passenger traffic reached a record 19 million people, on the stock market a Eurostar share cost 6.53 euros, and dividends amounted to 0.08 euros per share.
On the night of December 2-3, 1994, a group of professional and semi-professional cyclists led by Henri Sannier rode through the tunnel. This was the first official passage of cyclists through the entire tunnel.
In recent months, this object has again appeared in the news reports of news agencies. For thousands of refugees who left their historical homeland in search of new happiness, it became an indispensable part of the largely insurmountable road to the promised land. In 1994, the Channel Tunnel officially opened, connecting Great Britain to continental Europe. The long-awaited super-project, which began to be talked about back in the 19th century, has finally come true. Why now, 21 years later, is everyone talking about him with greater disappointment? Onliner.by tells how, after decades of overcoming mutual mistrust, a major infrastructure project of the 1980s turned into a source of headaches for European powers.
In 1802, mining engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier sent a letter to the first consul of the French Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte. In the document, the inventor proposed a project to the future emperor that would surely take his breath away: to connect France and Great Britain with a tunnel. For an era when courtly monarchs in wigs were shocked by the revolutionary rampage of a crowd intoxicated with blood, it was truly something amazing, although now Mathieu-Favier’s project looks naive. The engineer proposed digging a tunnel under the English Channel, through which horse-drawn carriages could cross the strait in the future. Ventilation was carried out through pipes brought to the surface of the water, and the object had to be illuminated by oil lamps.
Of course, nothing came of this then. Relations between France and Great Britain during this period could hardly be called friendly, and in May 1803 another war began between the countries.
The next attempt was made half a century later. In 1857, another Frenchman, Thomas de Gamond, presented his project for a tunnel across the strait. His scheme was fundamentally different from the proposal of the beginning of the century. By this time, steam locomotives were already plowing the expanses of Europe with all their might, and the Gamond Tunnel was originally designed for railway traffic: the era of horse-drawn carriages was fading into history.
The double-track structure was illuminated with gas lanterns, and the problem of ventilation, especially relevant when using steam locomotives, was solved with the help of an artificial island created approximately in the middle of the track. An international port was also established here.
The British Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston was outraged by the French proposal. "What? Do you still dare to ask for money for a cause whose purpose is to shorten a distance that we consider already too short?”- said the lord, thereby identifying the main problem facing the project. The question was not at all about technological problems (humanity has already learned to build tunnels, although not so long) and not even about financing. British politicians continued to view the kingdom's geographic isolation as its most important strategic advantage over its neighbors, and the possible Channel Tunnel as a direct and present threat to this.
And yet, after just over a decade, the first practical steps towards the construction of the facility that haunted the engineers were finally taken. The impetus for this was the potential common enemy that appeared between Great Britain and France. Germany finally united into a single state and quickly became a powerful player in pan-European politics. In the early 1870s, France lost the war and was interested in a serious ally, for which the United Kingdom became a natural candidate.
In 1880, specialists began building trial tunnels on both sides of the strait, and for this they already used the first steam drilling machines, the predecessors of modern tunnel-boring shields. In three years, they managed to dig almost four kilometers, and although it never got to the underwater part itself, this experience confirmed the fundamental possibility of constructing such an object.
Geopolitics again prevented the continuation of work. By 1883, France was again facing Great Britain in the African colonies. New concerns have emerged in British society regarding the use of the tunnel under construction in a potential conflict with the continent. Engineers immediately proposed to provide a special mechanism for flooding the facility in its design, but politicians were inexorable: construction was frozen again, this time for almost a century.
Due to the overly turbulent events of the first half of the 20th century, another return to the old theme occurred in the mid-1970s, but the economic crisis that hit Europe delayed practical implementation until 1987. During this time, government officials and engineers finally agreed on two fundamental things: firstly, 185 years after the idea appeared, they said a decisive “yes” to it, and secondly, they decided on the final design of the facility.
Four options were seriously considered, each of which was supposed to perform the same function - to unite the island and the continent with convenient transport links. The first (and most expensive) project was the Eurobridge, an amazing structure that was, in fact, a multi-level automobile overpass enclosed in a pipe, suspended on cables at a height of 70 meters above the surface of the English Channel. The estimated cost of the structure was £5.9 billion.
The second option was the so-called Euroroute (“Europath” or “Euroroute”), a set of several bridges and tunnels connecting artificial islands poured into the strait. In addition to the high budget (£5 billion), such a scheme also created big problems for shipping.
The third proposal, called the Channel Expressway, would build one large tunnel to alternate between cars and trains. It was much cheaper (“only” £2 billion), but would certainly have caused serious logistical problems associated with the separation of rail and road traffic.
Finally, the fourth project turned out to be the very option that combined relative ease of implementation with a budget acceptable to the interested states. According to the concept, called the "Eurotunnel", three separate tunnels were supposed to be built across the English Channel. The two main ones (7.6 meters in diameter) were designed for railway traffic. Between them there is a so-called “communication tunnel” with a diameter of 4.8 meters and intended for maintenance of the entire facility and evacuation of passengers in case of emergency.
Every 375 meters, the main tunnels were connected to special service passages, and air ducts were laid over the entire system, reducing the pressure during the passage of high-speed trains and eliminating the “piston effect” that arose.
The length of the structure was 51 kilometers, 39 of which were underwater under the English Channel. A couple of sidings were also built underground, allowing trains to change direction if necessary.
Construction work was significantly facilitated and made cheaper by the relatively favorable geological conditions in which the excavation was carried out. Almost along its entire length, the Eurotunnel is located in a chalk layer, which, on the one hand, was relatively soft, on the other - stable, and on the third - in itself provided good waterproofing. At the same time, as many as 11 tunnel boring shields were working at the construction complex, which made it possible to complete the drilling work quite quickly. The excavation began in December 1987, and exactly three years later, on December 1, 1990, the British were able to shake hands with the French at a depth of 40 meters from the bottom of the English Channel.
During this period, the builders had 8 million cubic meters of rock at their disposal. The French preferred to mix their half with water and pour the resulting pulp back into the strait, while the British managed the soil a little more economically. They built an artificial cape off their coast, on which they formed Samphire Hoe Park. Now more than 100 thousand people come annually to see the flora and fauna of the “traditional chalk meadow”.
Of course, the actual tunneling was only part of the large-scale work. Large cargo-passenger station complexes were erected at both exits from the facility - English and French. The creation of them and various engineering networks took another three and a half years. The grand opening of the Eurotunnel took place only in May 1994, two years later than planned. 13 thousand miners, engineers and other specialists coped with the task that once amazed Napoleon I in seven years.
What someone dreamed about and what someone feared has come true. Passenger trains began running between London on the one hand and Paris and Brussels on the other. It became possible to get from the British capital to the French capital in just 2 hours and 15 minutes. There was no longer any need to transfer to a ferry and fight seasickness, although surprisingly the ferry industry did not die with the launch of the Eurotunnel: the traffic, passenger and cargo, turned out to be too large, and the tunnel’s capacity was not unlimited.
The Eurotunnel is used by four types of trains. These are primarily high-speed passenger TGV Eurostars, running between London St Pancras Station, Paris Gare du Nord and Brussels Midi/Zuid station with several intermediate stops. In the tunnel, such a train travels at a speed of 160 km/h, covering it in 20 minutes, and on the surface, thanks to modern infrastructure, its speed reaches 300 km/h.
In addition to the TGV Eurostar and regular freight trains, passenger and freight Eurotunnel Shuttles operate on the Eurotunnel line. The former are designed to transport cars, vans and buses in closed carriages between station terminals at the exits, the latter - trucks in open carriages. At the same time, in passenger “shuttles” people do not get out of their cars.
The celebration of the delivery of the long-awaited project quickly ended. The boring and largely disappointing everyday life of its operation began. In the first year, shareholders and management of Groupe Eurotunnel expected to transport about 16 million passengers. The reality turned out to be much more prosaic: only 3 million people used the company’s services. Subsequently, this figure gradually increased, but last year Eurostar and Eurotunnel Shuttle trains carried only 10.4 million passengers.
At the same time, the facility cost £4.65 billion, an amount that turned out to be 80% higher than estimated. Eurotunnel was able to report its first annual profit only 14 years after the start of its work: in 2008, the joint-stock company announced a net profit of $1.6 million, and that was thanks to the restructuring of its debts. Subsequently, profitable years continued to alternate with unprofitable ones, but in any case, there is no question of the payback of the structure in the foreseeable future. In fact, from the point of view of financial indicators, Eurotunnel has become. However, the strategic importance of the object is difficult to overestimate.
