Ferries can do the job
Page 5
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ALL FORECASTS of cross-Channel traffic can be accommodated at low cost on existing ferry services, says the Dover Harbour Board.
According to an anti-tunnel leaflet produced by the board, very low levels of investment are needed to develop existing ferry services, whereas the British Rail "mousehole" single-track tunnel would cost £1,000m, and the British Steel EuroRoute would cost £4,000m.
It says that existing services are much more flexible, and points out that at no time since the end of World War Two have ferry services between England and France been suspended completely.
The 9,000 jobs which depend at present on the ferry-cased traffic would be put at risk, according to the Board, and this could result in long-term unemployment in South-East Kent, The Board is equally critical of those who argue that a tunnel would eliminate a bottleneck in EEC traffic. It says that the harbours could have been developed to cope with increased demand were it not for the threat of the previous tunnel project hanging over the ports.
According to the Board, larger and more efficient ferries could be commissioned over the next 30 years in order to meet anticipated demand, without there being any need either to add to the number of vessels or build a fixed link.
"For freight traffic, be it road or rail, the delays associated with crossing the Channel are institutional rather than physical. They require institutional solutions — not expensive, engineering ones," says the report.
And, even more bluntly, the -Board suggests that, unless developers take account of the cause of delays and weigh them up against the real value of time saved through a fixed link, each minute saved on a typical journey will cost between £13m and £63m, depending on how complex a link is built.
Commenting on the present debate, Jonathan Sloggett, chairman of the joint Dover Harbour Board/Kent County Council Channel Tunnel study working party, said: "Nobody has stopped to consider whether a bridge or tunnel is necessary at all."