This week Queen Elizabeth and French President Francois Mitterrand will officially open the $15 billion Channel Tunnel; the first freight traffic will go through next week. Full passenger service won’t begin until autumn. But the Chunnel’s lack of readiness doesn’t worry those on the north side of the divide-the British people aren’t ready, either. Several reasons Palmerston’s spirit still reigns:
In a recent poll, 75 percent of Britons doubted they’d ever use the Chunnel. Rachel Marchant, 75, lives one mile from the tunnel, close enough to France to see it when she walks her dogs. She’s flown to America eight times but has never crossed the channel. The divide “was a great comfort in wartime,” Marchant remembers. Many Britons think they live on “the mainland” already. The islands? That’s Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.
Planners took Britain’s deeply ingrained fear of rabies seriously, equipping the tunnel with “stun mats.” These electrically charged, wire-mesh cylinders, seven feet wide, should immobilize any French mongrels heading for England. But what about other undesirables? Tunnel foes have fretted about potato blight, French spiders and a honeybee-killing mite. In fact, the Chunnel presents no threat that shipping already hasn’t.
Despite Europe’s new free market, Britain will keep customs and border-control agents on duty at the Chunnel’s mouth. The government says it’s worried about drug traffic. Euroenthusiasts see British xenophobia at work. The Chunnel might eventually cure that illness-or make it worse, if familiarity breeds anything at all.
Not only claustrophobes are edgy. Many Britons think the Chunnel is a great idea for IRA bombers. Tunnel designers spent heavily on security, and London has made life sentences automatic for any attack on the Chunnel. But some forms of terror are psychic. Floods? Very unlikely. The tunnel was drilled through stable chalk an average of 148 feet under the seafloor. Fires? Can be smothered by foam or halon gas; a service tunnel between the two rail tunnels provides an escape route. Boredom? Sorry, no help. Car passengers will ride for 35 minutes in 18-foot-tall boxes, 10 autos per double-decker unit. Eurotunnel spokesman John Noulton admits the tunnel is dark but says the trip will resemble “traveling in a wide-body jet at night.” Where’s the cognac and the movie?
Regular Paris-to-London service should begin in September and will quickly spotlight British backwardness. Speed trains will race through the French countryside at up to 185 miles per hour, slow down to 100 for the Chunnel leg-and then crawl along at under 60 on old commuter tracks to London. Construction still hasn’t begun on Britain’s 68-mile side of the speed link. Says Noulton: “Something deep in the British psyche requires that we only do things long after everyone else knows they’re necessary.” Current plans call for the link to be finished a year or two after the arrival of the 21st century-assuming, of course, that the 21st century finds a route into Britain.
