The Channel Tunnel
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Major implications for road transport described by John Darker AMBIM
WHEN an Anglo /French working group of officials recommended in 1963 that a Channel tunnel was a better proposition than a bridge, the road haulage industry rapidly lost interest. It was felt that the tunnel—first proposed to Napoleon in 1802—might never be built. Alternative crossings by roll-on-roll-off services were adequate; container services were contemplated, and who could measure the likely impact of hovercraft or hydrofoil ferries?
The time is fast approaching when the British and French governments will have to decide whether to proceed with the tunnel or forget about it forever. Pointers suggest that a decision to proceed may be imminent. Mr. Marsh has promised an early statement. It is significant that the recent "spring madness" in France has not swayed the British Government from its stated wish to join the Common Market as soon as possible. The temptation to opt for the plausible North Atlantic Free Trade Area alternative has been resisted.
Since the 1963 report "proposals for a fixed channel link", many things have changed. The cost estimates, including interest charges, (£160m for the tunnel versus £329m for the bridge) have been altered by devaluation and other factors. The tunnel may now cost £250m or more. The traffic flows and forecasts of growth today would not coincide with estimates made in the early '60s.
Crunch stage?
Doubtless many interested parties have been marshalling the evidence for alternative projects since the Anglo /French study group plumped for a tunnel. Governments, like the fair sex, can change their minds; not until the boring drills start inching their way across the "ditch" will the advocates of other forms of link finally abandon hope.
My suspicion that things are getting to the crunch stage of inter-governmental decision was fostered by reports that some preparatory demolition has been undertaken in the Sangatte area south of Calais, the site of the French terminal. The Union Routiere de France is pressing the French Ministry of Transport for a motorway between Calais and the Lille-Paris motorway, with junctions in the 1Vnin area. It suggests that an expressway will be required southwards to Abbeville and on to Rouen. This would intersect the ParisRouen motorway and extend it to Caen. Improvements to the existing coastal roads are also proposed.
In Kent, the growth of road traffic in the past decade has swamped the capacity of sections of A2 and A20 roads from London. About two-thirds of existing crosschannel traffic approaches Dover via A2 and one-third uses A20. Motorways west of Maidstone entering the London area are already overloaded to the extent of three times their rated capacity and Mr. H. Bowdler, Kent county surveyor, has stated publicly that if improvements to these roads are not made it would not be possible to take the Channel Tunnel traffic.
The possibility of a motorway link from the English terminal cannot be ruled out, for Mr. Bowdler stressed in a recent paper —"The Highway Implications of the Channel Tunnel" given to a joint meeting of the Institutions of Highway and Structural Engineers—that the nearer the terminal site was to Folkestone the greater the choice in selecting a motorway route. He noted— was this a strong painter?—"One aspect of the construction of the tunnel . . of incidental interest to road planning in Kent is the likelihood, in 1975, of two or more sophisticated tunnelling machines suitable for operation in chalk, becoming available from the cross-channel work. Routes such as Folkestone by-pass and the construction of M20 beyond Wrotham could well involve road tunnels in chalk to give the most economical route." If, as a result of the tunnel, Kent roads are improved Metropolitan and South Eastern road hauliers among others will be delighted. But the channel tunnel implications are vastly more significant to the road transport industry.
Mr. Roger Calvert, hon. secretary of the National Council on Inland Transport, in a recent lecture to the Institute of Architects and Surveyors, argued that an extension of rail piggy-back services (carrying loaded lorries) beyond the ends of the tunnel railway to London and the industrial areas of the country would be justified as the best way of coping with the transport and traffic problems presented by the tunnel.
The mad problem
He is frankly a propagandist for British Rail but his argument that BR will suffer if freight—with the exception of Freightliner traffic—from the Continent can only travel to the tunnel terminal (%Oich he assumes will be at Ashford), deserves some consideration. For if, as Mr. Calvert states, the French Kangaroo (piggy back) system has expanded 500 per cent in five years, spreading in the process beyond to Belgium, Holland and Italy, and with new terminals for British road hauliers at Le Havre and Dunkirk, and alterations to BR's load gauge would permit the extension of the Kangaroo system to provincial areas in Britain, BR would obviously benefit greatly.
"The road problem", says Mr. Calvert, "is that huge convoys of vehicles, cars, lorries, semi-trailers, etc., will be arriving and departing and will be thrown on to an already overloaded road system. Failure to solve the rail problem will make the road problem worse".
Mr. Calvert has done some useful homework on the problem of reconciling the French and British rail load gauges. The bore of the Channel Tunnel is planned to allow a load gauge 16ft above the rails. Goods vehicles up to 13ft 4in. high will be carried on single deckers. Loads up to 14ft 6in. high will be carried on special wagons with advance notice. Mr. Calvert says most European states are adopting a road vehicle height limit of 4m (13ft Ifin.), though less in Austria, Finland, Greece and Denmark, Prior notice for loads over 13ft 14-in. is necessary in France. Such vehicles would not be able to proceed by rail in the UK because of bridge height restrictions.
This is not a new problem. Mr. M. A. Cameron (then of the British Transport Commission) urged that the problem of Franco/British rail gauge compatibility should be tackled, in a 1960 paper to the Institute of Transport. The South East Economic Planning Council, discussing the Channel Tunnel in a report published in 1967, pointed out that only about a third of the total European freight trade (apart from Scandinavian) was suitable for rail transit by the Tunnel and 40 per cent of this was likely to go through the Tunnel rather than by existing routes, But, "in general the effect of the Tunnel on the region's road traffic flows should not be over-estimated. Its impact on road traffic will be mainly in the immediate vicinity of the Tunnel, and much of the through traffic attracted to it already flows to and from the Kent ports."
Conflict of emphasis
Mr. Calvert quotes a spokesman for the Report, A Strategy for the South East on the TV programme Town and Around as saying: "It is commonly believed that the Channel Tunnel railhead in Kent will be a place where people and vehicles will be put on and off the ferry trains. This is not so; the trains will run to places all over the country?'
There is certainly some conflict of emphasis here. And the views of the Kent county surveyor, who is faced with the responsibility of road developments in Kent, cannot be shrugged aside. The Kent road problem exists regardless of whether the Channel Tunnel is built or not. If it is built, and road developments are incomplete when the Tunnel opens, there will be colossal jams in the terminal area—and heads may roll in high places.
If the Minister of Transport is persuaded by Mr. Calvert to incur the heavy additional cost of adjusting the rail gauge to permit lorries to be carried on trains from the Tunnel terminal via Ashford, Tonbridge, Croydon, West London (Olympia) to South Wales and to the Midlands and North West the road transport pattern of export services will be transformed out of all recognition. The logic is clear. If a rail-only tunnel is built it makes sense to put the loaded lorries on to rail at the earliest possible stage if cost and speed advantages resuh. But Ministry experts may well conclude that much of the public investment in motorways will have been wasted if additional expense is incurred in extending the rail gauge and building a lot of new rolling stock for piggy back or Kangaroo operations by rail.
Another project which would greatly concern international road hauliers is being considered favourably in Germany, according to Mr. Calvert. To meet the problem of the heavily congested north-south axis autobahn there is a scheme to build "an advanced mechanical device which, unmanned, computer controlled and rail guided, would carry road vehicles en masse from near point of origin to near point of destination".
This convenient—or threatening—device would be a double track railway of 3 metre gauge. Loading and unloading would use the same method as at GEishenen and Airolo for the St. Gotthard tunnel. "Cars would be on two decks and in two lines; goods vehicles of all kinds on one deck. There would be restaurants, toilets and lounges."
An alternative to the 32-mile-long bored tunnel recommended by the 1963 Anglo / French report is a combined road /rail
tunnel with ventilation shafts on artificial islands some 44 to 54miles apart. This was not considered in detail by the officials reporting in 1963. A much newer idea is the hybrid structure proposed by Mr. C. W. Niel McGowan, with causeways off each coast, immersed tubes under the main shipping lanes, and bridges to connect the causeways and tubes. The tubes would be less than 12km long and, it is claimed, could be adequately ventilated for vehicle exhausts.
The road transport industry cannot afford to play a neutral role in Channel Tunnel politics. The widest possible discussion of all the relevant factors and of the alternative plans prepared since the 1963 White Paper is called for. The passenger side of the industry would also be greatly affected by a rail-only tunnel. Is it not time for Mr Marsh to put all his cards on the table?