50 km long, 39 of which under the sea, it links Folkestone in Kent to Coquelles, near Calais
The Channel Railway Tunnel – inaugurated on May 6, 1994 – is a work that ideally had to unite Europe to its main island, Great Britain, even if Brexit later mortified this value. It is called in English Channel Tunnel, in French Tunnel sous la Manche, in Italian Eurotunnel even if this is the name of the company that was the concessionaire of its management until 2086. The American Society of Civil Engineers declared the tunnel one of the “seven wonders of the modern world”.
50 km long, 39 of which under the sea, which connects Folkestone in Kent to Coquelles, near Calais, passing on the bottom of the English Channel, it is located at an average depth of 45 meters under the seabed. It is the tunnel with the longest underwater section in the world and, in its overall length, is second only to the Seikan tunnel in Japan, which runs largely under mountains. The Channel Tunnel instead for about 39 kilometers is under the sea, against 23 of the Seikan. The crossing takes about 20 minutes; a ride on a shuttle train takes a total of about 35. Eurostar trains cross the tunnel at speeds below their technical capabilities, in order to adapt to the speed of the shuttle trains. It offers three main rail services: a shuttle train for motor vehicles, the Eurostar passenger service between London, Paris and Brussels and freight transport.
The entire work consists of three parallel galleries. Two are railway tunnels of 7.6 meters in diameter spaced about 30 meters in the center there is the service tunnel which has the dual purpose of providing access to maintenance workers and to provide a safe escape route in case of emergency, such as the fire that in 2008 caused fourteen injuries of which six intoxicated, while the other eight sustained minor injuries due to the explosion of glass. The two railway tunnels are also directly connected every 250 meters by ducts to release pressure, ie to alleviate the “piston effect” due to the compression of the air caused by the transit of the running train.
The idea of the connection between the shores of the Channel has remote origins, with studies already produced at the beginning of the last century. In 1957 the Tunnel sous la Manche Study Group was established, which three years later suggested the construction of two main railway tunnels and a service tunnel. The project was started in 1973, but stopped two years later due to financial problems after having built 250 meters of a test tunnel. The idea was re-launched in 1984 by the French and British governments, which open a tender between private companies. There are four proposals that arrive: two railway tunnels, a car tunnel and a bridge.
Of the four projects, the one most similar to the 1973 proposal is chosen; the announcement was made on January 20, 1986 and the two governments signed a treaty in this regard, the Fixed Link Treaty in Canterbury on the following February 12. Treaty that will be ratified in 1987. The excavations of the railway tunnels are joined on 22 May and 28 June 1991, each meeting is accompanied by a celebration ceremony. Of every pair of “moles” that have met, the French one is dismantled, while the English one is directed to dig towards the outside and walled up on the spot. On the English side, 4 million cubic meters of limestone have been removed, most of which dumped under Shakespeare Cliff near Folkestone, wresting an area of about 36 hectares from the sea today called Samphire Hoe and destined for public park. The excavations ended 7 months later and at the same time finished the 2 railway tunnels in Folkestone in England and in Calais in France.
On 6 May 1994 there was the inauguration of the Euro Tunnel with the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and the French President Francois Mitterand. The total cost of the entire work was approximately 10 billion pounds (11,436,693,301 euros). The tunnel is still operating at a loss and the value of the shares that financed the work lost 90% of its value between 1989 and 1998. The Eurotunnel company announced a loss of 1.33 billion pounds in 2003 and £ 570 million in 2004 and is in constant negotiation with creditors. In its defense, Eurotunnel cites insufficient traffic (only 38% of passengers and 24% of goods planned for the project phase) and a heavy burden of interest on the debt. Part of the commercial failure of the operation appears to be caused by excessive transit charges. The tunnel is managed by the Eurotunnel company (Eurotunnel plc in England, Eurotunnel SA in France).
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