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Channel Tunnel marks 20 years of operation
$6.7 Billion for 94 miles of tunnels? (3 tunnels) underwater? That is a bargain now for that price! Chunnel shows anything is possible, oh and 20 yrs ago?, yea anything can be done now, its just cost prohibitive in most if not all cases nowadays. Congrats to them folks on the other side of the Atlantic.
Agreed on the Big Dig issue, all it did was push the congestion upstream so now the jams are 5 miles further south and north. But, to someone’s credit, the side walls of the Big Dig are deep enough to support a North Station/South Station rail link beneath the highway, should the will ever happen. Imagine HSR between DC, NYC and Montreal thru Boston in 5 or 6 hours, what a killer idea. Oh well.
And an outstanding example of how this tremendous heritage to all future generations of Great Britain and Europe may have been impossibly managed, funded, underestimated in price. Many or most rail projects demonstrate this double aspect.
Try comparing the cost of the Big Dig in Boston and its overruns and continuing problems. It is not just railroad projects that get caught in cost overages because, in part, of the engineering surprises that are found once you are in the ground. We will not go into other inappropriateness.
I would say $ for $, mile for mile, the Chunnel is better value than the Boston Depressed Traffic Jamb, certainly more economically strategic, AND, it contains a rail link!
For less than the cost of the BIg Dig the Swiss built /are building the longest (railway) tunnel in the world, the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
It’s hard to believe the Channel Tunnel is 20 years old. It provides a way to quickly travel between London and Paris. Before the Channel Tunnel the quickest way to travel on the ground between London and Paris was the coordinated service using Sea Link hovercraft across the English Channel and dedicated trains between London and Dover and Boulogne and Paris.
The Chunnel is a bigger dig. Now why can’t the US do big railway projects like this? Or maybe California HSR is our chunnel.
On my bucket list