Word: tunneling
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...Assist from the U.S. The man behind the tunnel is not a European, but Manhattan Lawyer Frank Davidson, 43. Appalled by a rough Channel crossing in 1956, Davidson was the moving spirit in setting up the prestigious Channel Tunnel Study Group, consisting of his own Technical Studies Inc., a pair of venerable British and French companies associated with an 1881 attempt to bore a commercial tunnel, and the Suez Co., which, stripped of its canal, has become an investment company...
After exhaustive studies of both tunnel and bridge schemes, the group flatly favored a tunnel to be bored or dredged out of the chalk Channel bed. Plans for the bored tunnel actually call for two large parallel tunnels, each containing a single railway track, plus a small service tunnel. Stretching from Folkestone to Calais, the tunnels would run underwater for 23 miles. Autos and trucks would drive onto flatcars, be whisked through the tunnels at 60 m.p.h. by electric locomotives. Passenger and freight trains would be routed directly through the tunnels, cutting the train time from London to Paris from...
...prospects for a tunnel grew brighter and brighter, French truckers became alarmed that the rail-only link might cut their earnings by forcing them to piggyback through the tunnel. Joined by British and French steelmakers, who stand to sell about 800,000 tons of steel if a bridge is built, the truckers set up a pro-bridge group headed by shrewd, forceful Jules Moch, last Interior Minister of France under the Fourth Republic...
...Great Debate. The relative merits of tunnel and bridge have plunged their proponents into a no-holds-barred debate. Either is technically feasible. Each would cut the cost of a Channel crossing from $32 for a car with three passengers to $22.50, reduce freight charges by 50%. Both would take about five years to build. The tunnel's main advantage is that at an estimated $364 million, it would cost only half as much as the bridge. Moch contends that a tunnel would induce claustrophobia and be a trap in case of an accident. But pro-tunnel people contend...
...current estimates are that there will be 11,400,000 in 1965. To handle this mounting load by present means, Britain alone would have to spend $56 million for new ferries, ports, planes and airfields in the next five years. By contrast, the proposed British contribution to a tunnel would be $73 million-and a tunnel would not wear out as do planes and ferries. And where a Channel bridge, because of its huge cost, would have to be subsidized by the British and French governments, a consortium of six international banks* is prepared to raise the entire cost...