!HA says Chunnel is mere `mousehole'
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ULIERS' hopes of a e-through Channel tunnel g built were dashed by week's Anglo-French mitment to building the nnel Tunnel Group's rail. scheme.
ffecti v el y, the deci s ion pones any likelihood or a I wood being built for 34 s, and the Road ['adage wiation dismissed the plan "mousehole" project.
Inks Prime Minister Mari Thatcher said it is an :icing" project, the RI-IA it was "deeply disapMug" that only a rail tunwill be built when 90 per of goods moved between am n and Europe goes by 1 now.
A marvellous opportunity inbark on an imaginative cct allowing free move
it all kinds of surface ic between the UK and ape as the 2Ist century as has patently been lost. The vague statement that aad link should be built 7 holds little hope of any y progress. The link will iist of a couple of mouses well into the next col'," the RI IA said.
believes that hauliers will .m using ferries as queues
develop at the roll-on/-off shuttle trains' tenni.;
he Freight Transport As sociation conveyed its members' apathy over the tunnel by saying operators would use whichever crossing offers best value for money.
Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley told MPs on Moraday that E.urobridge, Euroroute and Channel Expressway were eliminated on technical grounds.
But the Government is "very much aware" of the arguments that the public would like to drive across the Channel.
It has secured a pledge from the Channel Tunnel Group that it will put forward by the end or the century a proposal for a drivethrough link to be undertaken "as soon as its technical feasibility is assured, and economic circumstances and the growth of traffic allow it to be financed without undermining the return on the original link".
At a later stage the Government would he free to get fresh bids for a further link "not before" 2020, he said.
• I'here were few criticisms of the decision to go for a rail-only link, and some MPs saw it as a good opportunity for switching freight from road to rail.
The main concern expressed by MPs was that the rail-only link would have the biggest environmental impact in Kent.
Shadow Transport Secretary Robert Flughes said the Government, acting against the prejudices of the Prime Minister, had actually chosen a link which had the possibility of matching Britain's needs for an integrated transport policy.
Ridley told him that it was hoped to cut on Customs de lays for operators by siting national controls next to each other at the entry to the link.