Gunnel is 'missed opportunity': RHA
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• Hauliers' "gut reaction" at the Government's decision to build a rail-only tunnel is disappointment at a lost opportunity, Road Haulage Association director-general Freddie Plaskett said at a Channel Tunnel conference in London last week.
He did say that if the tunnel matches the ferries on service and price, hauliers will use it; but Eurotunnel will have to provide all the facilities that lorry drivers need and are accustomed to getting on the ferries.
These include comfortable accommodation on the shuttle train, good rest facilities at the terminals in case of delay, and ability to carry out minor maintenance.
Plaskett does not believe that rail protection played a part in the British Government's decision to abandon the three schemes which would have allowed road vehicles to drive across.
But he accepted that international hauliers face increased competition from rail, and does not dispute Eurotunnel's claim that it would remove 300 lorries a day from the roads.
The tunnel would lead to an increase in co-operation between hauliers and rail freight, of which there is already a great deal.
British Rail's Channel Tun nel director Malcolm Southgate took a rosier view of things.
He forecast that rail's current annual two million tonnes of cross-Channel traffic by train ferry would shoot up to 7.2 million tonnes immediately the tunnel opens in 1993, and will rise to 1E6 million tonnes 10 years later.
There will be 22 freight trains in each direction every day, much of it containerised, although there will also be block trains and an extension to the Continent of the Speedlink wagonload service.