The Channel Tunnel is a 50. 45-kilometre railway tunnel that connects Folkestone with Coquelles. It is the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland. Plans to build a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802. The eventual successful project began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994.
About Channel Tunnel in brief
The Channel Tunnel is a 50. 45-kilometre railway tunnel that connects Folkestone with Coquelles. It is the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland. The tunnel carries high-speed Eurostar passenger trains, the Eurotunnel Shuttle for road vehicles and international freight trains. Since at least 1997, people have attempted to use the tunnel to travel illegally to the UK, causing many migrants to head towards Calais. Plans to build a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802, but British political and media pressure over the compromising of national security had disrupted attempts to building a tunnel. The eventual successful project began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994. Valued at £5. 5 billion in 1985, it was at the time the most expensive construction project ever proposed. The cost finally amounted to £9 billion, well over its predicted budget. Since its construction, the tunnel has experienced a few mechanical problems. Both fires and cold weather have temporarily disrupted its operation. In 2017, through rail services carried 10. 3 million passengers and 1. 22 million tonnes of freight. This compares with 11. 7 million passengers, 2. 6 million lorries and 2. 2 million cars by sea through the Port of Dover. In 1839, Aimé Thomé de Gamond, a Frenchman, performed the first geological and hydrographical surveys on the Channel, between Calais and Dover.
He presented a proposal to Napoleon III for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez to Eastwater Point with a portairshaft on the Varne sandbank at a cost of 170 million francs, or less than £7 million. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, the British prime minister David Lloyd George repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend against German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously. In 1907, a film by Georges Méliès, depicts King Edward VII and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a Tunnel under the English Channel. On the English side a 2. 13-metre diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a 1,893-metres pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff to Sangatte Cliff. In May 1882, a similar machine dug 1,669m from Sang attete to Sang at the French side. The project was abandoned, owing to campaigns over Britain’s national defences during a century later during the TML project. The Tunnel is the third longest railway tunnel in the world, being just 150 metres longer than the Yulhyeon Tunnel in South Korea. It connects end-to-end with the high- speed railway lines of the LGV Nord in France and High Speed 1 in England. It has the longest underwater section of any tunnel in a world, and is the largest such transport in the World, with a length of 37.9 kilometres.
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This page is based on the article Channel Tunnel published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
