Suppose that a passenger railway line were to be built between Washington, D.C., and New York, but without any station to get on or off the train when it passed through Philadelphia.
Someone from Philadelphia who wanted to use this train to go to New York would have to travel to Washington and get aboard the train to New York from there. And a New Yorker wanting to go to Philadelphia on this train would have to journey first to Washington, then head back north to Philadelphia by some other means of transport.
Suppose also that the trains on this line could travel at 186 miles an hour between New York and Philadelphia but would have to slow to 100 m.p.h. on the Philadelphia-Washington leg of the trip.
To complicate things, suppose further that the railroad company, in laying out this Washington-New York line, bought millions of dollars` worth of property to secure the right of way and then was stuck in a recession with property it couldn`t sell when the government came along and changed the route.
You might conclude that this was no way to run a railroad. But that is more or less how the Channel Tunnel rail service between Britain and France will operate when it gets started next year.
It`s the biggest engineering project in Europe in this century. It is costing more than $16 billion. And in many ways, it will be a technological marvel, dramatically transforming ways of life on both sides of the historic divide between Britain and the Continent. But because of bureaucratic shortsightedness, the tunnel will not achieve its full potential until after the turn of the century.
None of this is the fault of the French. In France, passengers with cars from Britain will come off tunnel trains in their cars and be linked immediately with the French freeway system. Those traveling without their own cars will transfer onto high-speed trains that will whisk them to Paris, Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany.
But in Britain, it will not be so easy. Until the British get around to building a passenger terminal at Ashford, about 10 miles from the tunnel mouth, passengers will be able to get on and off trains only in London. This situation will persist at least until 1995, virtually guaranteeing that anyone traveling to or from southeast England will ignore the tunnel and continue to make the crossing by sea ferry.
”This could only happen in this country,” says Hugh Blake, leader of the Ashford Borough Council. ”We undertake the biggest engineering task in Europe this century, and no one has yet figured out how people will get to it. It`s still very much in a state of flux.”
Also, unlike the French, the British do not as yet have a high-speed train system and won`t have one ready until the 21st Century. British Rail initially concluded, when the tunnel was proposed in 1987, that a high-speed system wasn`t needed. So the high-speed tunnel trains will have to slow down to about 100 miles an hour when running on the British side until high-speed tracks become available.
Moreover, British Rail is stuck with $185 million worth of property it bought for the high-speed track route. When the government later changed the route, the property had to be sold, but because of falling prices, rail officials estimate they will lose between $35 million and $50 million to do so.
”The British government`s record on the high-speed rail link is abysmal even by British standards,” says Jack Woolford, chairman of the Dover Society, a group set up in 1988 to find ways to cope with the impact of the Tunnel on Dover.
One French local official comments: ”The British railroad network is appallingly out of date. The British invented railways, then forgot about them.”
To many Frenchmen, Britain`s inept preparations for the tunnel is a joke. The French tell their British friends, ”We will be ready in `93, and you will be ready in `94-that is, 2094.”
Everything about the tunnel project is immense, including the problems it has generated. A lot of British people never wanted it in the first place, on grounds that for centuries the channel divide had safeguarded Britain from invasion and to breach it would open the nation to hordes of illegal immigrants, drugs and even rabies.
The British government wanted the tunnel but has insisted that no public money go into it, and it forced the French to take the same position. This has made it difficult to find financing in Britain for essential rail services. The tunnel project`s image also was tarnished when the company building it, Eurotunnel, underestimated its cost, fought highly publicized battles with its contractors over money and repeatedly had to go begging to its bankers for more funds.
Because of these and other problems, the tunnel project is behind schedule. It was supposed to open in June next year, but that date has been pushed further to Sept. 15. And even if that target is met, the service initially will be limited because of a shortage of trains. Eurotunnel thus will lose the revenues it might have earned from the peak travel months of June through August-an estimated $370 million-and officials say the tunnel will not become fully operational until the summer of 1994.
For all that, the tunnel-at 30.7 miles long the second longest in the world (next to the 33.1-mile Seikan Tunnel in Japan)-will still provide a novel and fascinating travel experience. When it is fully operational, passengers can board trains at London`s Waterloo or King`s Cross stations and, without ever having to leave their seats, arrive in Paris or Brussels a mere three hours later.
At present they have to get off the train with their baggage at channel ports, go through immigration and customs controls, board a ferry for a trip that takes 1 1/2 hours, get off on the other side and board another train. The trip to Paris takes a total of six to seven hours, and if seas in the Channel are choppy-as they often are in winter-it can be a rough way to travel.
The faster travel time will make the tunnel highly competitive with the airlines. Anyone flying between London and Paris can spend three hours or more to make the trip, even though the time in the air is only 45 minutes.
Even before its opening, the tunnel has become a tourist attraction. There are visitors` centers at both the English and French ends of the tunnel, offering displays on its construction that attract hundreds of people each day.
Tourists arriving in England from France, once they can get off the train without having to go directly to London, will come upon one of the most beautiful areas of the country. Kent, the English county in which the tunnel is being built, has long been known as ”the garden of England.” An area of wooded hills and valleys, castles and ancient villages, it is well worth exploring by car.
Historic Canterbury, with its cathedral where Thomas a Becket was murdered in 1170, is only about 25 miles from the tunnel entrance. Throughout the county are lovely gardens, ancient pubs and country hotels and restaurants that reflect the English style of gracious living at its best. In recent years the more rural parts of Kent have attracted a growing number of stockbrokers and other well-to-do Britons as places to live. But there is also high unemployment in eastern Kent, especially in the port towns, where it runs about 15 percent.
The Pas de Calais area on the French side of the channel is far less inviting. The landscape is green and gently rolling but lacks the charm of Kent, and the area seems remote from the heart of France. A recent national survey of university students rated Pas de Calais the least desirable part of France to live. Teachers and civil servants who are assigned to the area generally regard it as punishment duty. The area also is beset by chronic unemployment, which ranges up to 20 percent in some towns. But prices of almost everything are far cheaper than in Kent, and that makes it potentially more attractive to investors and shoppers.
The countryside, far less wooded than Kent, is generally rather flat and uninteresting. Tourists usually hurry through Pas de Calais, and with good reason.
Some resistance to the tunnel has been felt in the immediate areas that will be served by it on both sides of the channel. In Kent, this opposition has been largely based on concerns that the tunnel and its associated works will damage a pristine environment. In port cities such as Dover and Calais, many are worried over the tunnel`s bypassing their towns and causing businesses to dry up.
But the tunnel also evokes great enthusiasm from some.
Michel Niemann, the senior civil servant in the French village of Coquelles just west of Calais, is among those who look forward to the opening of the tunnel. On land outside Coquelles that was used to grow wheat and sugar beets, work is proceeding on a tunnel terminal that will cover an area as large as London`s Heathrow Airport. And construction just started near the village on one of the largest commercial developments in Europe that will be called City of Europe.
Designed to cater to tunnel users, City of Europe will feature restaurants from every European country, 150 shops, several hotels and a cultural center. Niemann believes it will attract thousands of British visitors who will come via the tunnel just for a day`s shopping and will be a convenient jumping-off place for many Europeans who want to visit Britain.
”We can offer food of far superior quality than what`s available in Britain and in cheaper hotels,” Niemann says. ”Many tourists might run up to London and come back here at night. It`s expensive on the other side.”
Niemann says City of Europe could ”kill off” Calais. Some Calais shopkeepers, he says, are applying to have a second shop in City of Europe to offset the losses they expect when the tunnel finally opens.
Niemann notes that a former British-owned textile plant, which once employed 2,500 people, was being converted for use by about 40 small companies expected to invest in the area.
So confident are Coquelles officials about their community`s future that they are being selective about whom they will allow to invest there. They turned down a British chemical plant, Niemann says, because ”we don`t want to be the garbage can of Britain.” Similarly, he says, a request to set up an English old people`s home was rejected. He declined to say why, but one village official says: ”We don`t want to be a dumping ground for old people. Because of the bureaucracy involved, it takes a week to ship a corpse back to England.”
Dominique Dupilet, a parliamentary deputy for Pas de Calais, has proposed that a European convention center be built as part of Coquelles` City of Europe. ”So far, any convention center is a national endeavor,” he says.
”No one has thought of one that would answer European needs.
Dupilet is convinced that the tunnel will bring an economic boom to Pas de Calais. ”We are at the heart of northwest Europe, of the employment pool between Paris, Brussels and London,” he says. ”When people realize our position in the largest money-spinning area in Europe, and when they think where they can go in two hours from here, investors will be coming.”
Jean Glud, director of the 82-bed Calais Surgical Clinic, already has discovered a way to increase the clinic`s income by capitalizing on the tunnel. He has signed a contract with a British health insurance firm whereby the firm would send 200 British patients a year to Calais for treatment via the tunnel.
The contract is attractive to the British firm, he says, because medical care is 30 to 50 percent less expensive in Calais than in British hospitals. He says the tunnel will make such an arrangement possible because people who are ill can travel more quickly and in greater comfort than on ferries, especially when the sea is rough.
He says his clinic is the only one between Lille, France, and London that specializes in open-heart surgery. The clinic is planning to build a new wing to accommodate British heart patients and already has begun treating some Britons for cataract operations.
When the high-speed rail system finally goes into operation in Britain, Glud says, Calais will be less than an hour away from London. He says patients from as far away as Greece and Portugal might then fly to London and then take the tunnel train to Calais. These two countries, he says, have a shortage of specialized surgical hospitals and might find this arrangement cheaper than building new hospitals and training more surgical teams.
Guy Flamengt, director general of the Calais Chamber of Commerce, sees little of value in the tunnel other than its spurring the French government to build a freeway to Calais-something the city has been seeking for many years- and a high-speed train link to Paris.
”The tunnel is just another way of crossing the channel, which was not objectively needed,” he says. ”We were never badly linked with Britain. We have a ferry leaving here every 45 minutes. The tunnel was a political symbol, and good business for the contractors.”
Others in Calais dismiss the Chamber of Commerce as ”the Chamber of Ferries,” and say it is so concerned with protecting the ferry trade that it is neglecting opportunities that will be opened up by the tunnel.
But Flamengt is concerned that the tunnel will take business away from Calais shopkeepers and says that the rush of British industrial investors that Calais expected has not materialized. ”Two or three years ago, we were flooded with potential British investors,” he says. ”We were very optimistic. But nothing happened, partly because of the recession in Britain.”
Construction of the tunnel, he says, has provided work for some Calais people, but they are now being laid off, and by the end of the year, Calais will be back to an unemployment level of 18 to 20 percent. ”A lot of people are convinced the tunnel will bring prosperity to Calais, but there is no reason to think that is true,” he says.
Patrick Le Guillou, of the Calais Development Center, disagrees. ”Calais is a town of the last century, but the future will be good,” he says. Plans are afoot, he says, for a new university in Calais to do research on transportation problems, and there is plenty of space around the town for industrial development.
”Development may take 20 years,” he says. ”You need that to change the mentality of the people. People are going to change, and the town is going to change, even if they don`t want to.”
When the tunnel project was announced in 1987, many British people rushed to France to buy holiday homes in Pas de Calais. Some British property developers also bought up large numbers of properties, hoping to sell them at a profit. But that bubble burst with the onset of the British recession, and many potential British buyers were put off by press reports that the French had engaged in price gouging.
Some Britons also bought old run-down farm properties that were subsequently damaged by a 1990 hurricane. Others defaulted on their mortgage payments, and French banks have since become reluctant to lend to the British, according to Thea Hemery, a Briton who owns a St. Omer real estate firm.
”The tunnel has been a great locomotive in bringing people here,” she says. ”Sales are creeping back up this year, but people are being more selective about what they buy.” There has been no similar rush by the French to buy property in Kent, where prices can be three times as high as in Pas de Calais.
On the English coast where the ferry companies are based, the decision to build a tunnel was greeted with near panic. The companies were afraid they would be driven out of business, but that feeling has abated. To remain competitive, the companies have reduced staff and built larger, more modern ferries complete with swimming pools, discotheques and other amenities. Service has become friendlier and the food better.
At Folkestone, formerly linked by ferries with Boulogne in France, the old ferries have been replaced by fast catamarans capable of carrying cars and passengers, though not trucks.
Opposition to the tunnel was intense in Folkestone and Dover initially, and even now feelings run high among people who fear loss of jobs at the ports. ”It will take a lot to change the people of Dover,” says Tony Gueterbock, a Eurotunnel spokesman. The tunnel entrance is a few miles west of Dover, at Cheriton, and many Dover people fear their town will suffer for it. Local officials estimate that Dover will lose 6,000 jobs because of the tunnel and the coming of the European Community`s Single European Market next year. The single market will reduce the need for freight forwarders and customs officials.
Dover always has been a rather drab place where tourists passed through instead of stopping. It has no good hotels or restaurants, and many of its bed-and-breakfast establishments are run-down.
Paul Watkins, leader of Dover District Council, notes that restaurants have never trained their staffs to speak any language other than English or offered menus that might appeal to non-English tourists. ”We have an ongoing educational process to get operators to wake up,” he says.
The Dover Harbor Board plans to redevelop the docks to include restaurants, marinas, hotels and entertainment, deciding to stake its future in part on getting tourists to stay rather than pass through.
It also is looking for industrial development and has given a contract to the Tag McLaren company to build a Formula 1 race track and a factory to produce race cars. This has upset some local people, who say the race track will despoil an area of natural beauty and generate unwanted traffic.
Elsewhere, opposition to the tunnel has died down, according to Penny Smith, a Eurotunnel official who deals with local communities. ”People thought that if they shouted loud enough, they could stop it from happening,” she says. ”When they found they couldn`t, they became a bit subdued.”
Even critics concede Eurotunnel has done much to meet environmental concerns. In the immediate vicinity of the tunnel, properties, at Eurotunnel`s expense, have been insulated against noise, dust monitors have been installed and mounds of earth built around the tunnel mouth to serve as a visual screen. Opposition to the tunnel does not extend to Ashford, 10 miles away, which will be the site of an international passenger terminal. Officials there are convinced the tunnel will attract service industries and bring an economic boom to the town. ”We will be the gateway to Europe,” says Hugh Blake, leader of the Ashford Borough Council.
But no one knows when the $148 million passenger terminal will be built. The government hasn`t committed the money, and after it does, construction will take 2 1/2 years.
Max Oates, senior marketing executive with the Shepway District Council in Folkestone, is pushing the development of light industry in Folkestone to take up the slack from the ferry jobs that will be lost. He is convinced the tunnel will bring both economic and psychological benefits.
”The tunnel will help people to realize we aren`t an island anymore,”
he says. ”Soon we will have Continental companies setting up here, in more direct, fierce competition with our companies. So far the British people have been very, very slow to realize that we can`t afford to be an island, with protection all around it.”
In Calais, Guy Flamengt of the Chamber of Commerce laughs at the notion that the tunnel will help end the insular mentality of the British and make them more European. ”That`s just nonsense,” he says. ”You will never change the British, and I hope not. It would be a tragedy if the British became ordinary Europeans. We like them because they are British. It`s not a problem to us that they don`t want to change.”
