It seems trivial today to travel from Paris to London by train in 2 hours 20 minutes, but the dream dates back to Napoleon and we had to wait until May 6, 1994 for the dream to come true. It was 30 years ago.
Since its inauguration, 480 million passengers took the Channel Tunnel. Every day, around 500 trains shuttle between France and England. The goal is to reach 1,200 daily trips.
The technical sheet of the work is impressive. “We are talking about three tunnels and not just one tunnel : two railway tunnels each for one direction of traffic and a service tunnel between the two”, recalls Nathan Bocard, transport specialist at RTL.
The longest underwater tunnel section in the world
“Tunnels which are still 50 kilometers long, including 38 kilometers in the underwater section. That actually makes them quite simply the longest underwater tunnel section in the world. And all of this is sometimes up to 40 meters below the seabed.”
In total, these are 10,000 people who participated in its construction which cost 100 million francs, double what was planned at the time. A budget overrun “linked to the fact that the two states found it difficult to consult together to define security standards applicable to a completely new and exceptional object”, explains Jacques Gounon, president of Getlink, the parent company of Eurotunnel.
The second age of the Eurotunnel
Thirty years after its commissioning, the infrastructure must face new challenges, mainly environmental. The Channel Tunnel offers an alternative to ferries, which are very polluting, in the transport of goods. The high-speed train emits half as much CO2 as the ferry.
“When you want to cross in impeccable environmental conditions, the only solution is the Channel Tunnel“, says Jacques Gounon.
The Eurotunnel must also adapt to the new reality of movement of people caused by Brexit. It is also about maintaining a solid link between the United Kingdom and the European continent in terms of travel.
“We are no longer in a challenge strictly linked to the tunnel, but we are in a very strong integration at the European level. It is in a way a bit of the second age of Eurotunnel, that is to say d‘integrate, despite Brexit, even more Great Britain into intra-European travel“, considers Gilles Dansart, director of Mobilettre.
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