2023-12-14 20:42:00
Nearly thirty years after the end of work on the Channel Tunnel, there is good and bad news concerning the infrastructure located one hundred meters under Pas-de-Calais and linking France (and the ‘Europe) to Great Britain.
Yann Leriche, CEO of Getlink, parent company of Eurotunnel, spoke in particular at a press conference about the underutilization of the tunnel. If high-speed trains return to their pre-Covid attendance levels with ten million passengers expected this year, this only reflects half of the annual passenger potential of twenty million for which the Channel Tunnel was designed.
With LeShuttle (a service for cars which links Calais to Folkestone) and LeShuttle Freight (the same service for goods), there are up to 400 trains per day while the capacity is 1,000. And the fingers of a hand is enough to deplore the number of daily freight trains which come up against the limited size of rail containers in Great Britain.
The good news, according to Yann Leriche, lies in the reduction from ten to five years of « time to market », the time needed to launch new services. This approach results in a simplification of standards and procedures. In practice, new generations of trains, such as the TGV-M, will be able to use the tunnel with a few minor adaptations that are easy to integrate into the design.
Gone is the obligation to run trains of eighteen cars, which are impossible to make profitable during off-peak hours. Two new operators, the Dutch Heuro on London-Amsterdam and the start-up Evolyn facing Eurostar on Paris-London, have come forward.
At Eurotunnel, it is believed that the doubling of direct high-speed connections to the UK will occur within ten years. Note that the toll (around 20 euros) is collected per occupied seat and not per path as the SNCF network does.
“More modern than ever”
Growth comes through diversification. In the north tunnel, a high voltage line (340,000 Volts) allows energy to be exported or imported. The gigawatt transported corresponds to the power supply of a city like Lyon or Birmingham. At the same time, the medium voltage network corresponding to the 25,000 volts required by locomotives was reinforced in anticipation of growth in traffic. A synchronous static compensator smoothing consumption peaks threatening the French and British networks. A first !
Data – 70% of that which passes between Europe and the United Kingdom – circulates under the Channel through the tunnel. Here, the optical fibers are safe from sea fishermen’s nets and easy to repair. They are also out of reach of eavesdroppers…
“Thirty years later, the tunnel is more modern than ever,” says the CEO of a group which “invests 20% of its turnover in modernization”. Is the Lyon-Turin tunnel of interest to Getlink? “We are looking at the call for tenders for the operation which has just been launched. »
EES, seven more minutes
Next fall, the European Union will impose biometric checks on nationals of countries outside the Union. This measure – Entry-Exit System – has been postponed several times, the computer systems being incapable of managing the identification of a passenger within a reasonable time. We can imagine the chaos in the airports if this had been compulsory during the Paris Olympic Games.
As Great Britain is a third country, citizens (70% of passengers) will have to pass facial and digital biometric checks. The procedure resembles the American ESTA with prior registration on the Internet allowing identity data to be collated which will only then be verified. A specific route is then planned for first-timers, those who have not already been registered. A car tour is dedicated to them before passing in front of an immigration official. During subsequent trips to the continent, the subsequent will avoid this pre-registration. In total, this new border crossing process for new third-country nationals is expected to add five to seven minutes. Let’s hope so.
#whats #Channel