Who paid for the construction of the Channel tunnel?

The project was financed entirely by private sector capital, including five banks who were part of the TransManche Link consortium. Financing originated partly from investment by shareholders and partly from GBP8 billion of debt (about USD12. 2 billion, 1994 prices).



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Anglo-French consortium Transmarche Link (TML) built the tunnel. TML was made up of companies from the UK and France. UK companies: Balfour Beatty, Costain, Tarmac, Taylor Woodrow, Wimpey. French companies: Bouygues, Dumez, SAE, SGE, Spie Batignolles.

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The Channel Tunnel is one of the biggest engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. Taking more than five years to complete, with more than 13,000 workers from England and France collaborating to realise the vision, the tunnel has been named one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

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While the aviation industry remains in chaos with airports and airlines racking up billions of pounds of losses, the Channel Tunnel has returned to profit. Eurotunnel operates the sub-sea link between England and France, running Le Shuttle trains for cars and lorries.

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Eurotunnel is now highly profitable, after a difficult start when it was held down by massive debts from the tunnel construction. Debt restructuring in 2007 reversed the company's fortunes — at the expense of thousands of small shareholders who saw their holdings slashed in value.

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Soon after the start of operations, Eurotunnel reached a delicate financial situation which resulted from the escalation of construction costs, a large overestimation of the cross-Channel market and the underestimation of the cross-Channel ferry operators' competitive response which led to a very damaging price war.

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www.cnplus.co.uk Page 2 Inevitably, important design aspects were wholly inadequate. For example, the designers failed to foresee high- speed trains would generate significant heat in the tunnel from air friction. Retrospectively, a chilled water air conditioning system was added to the design at enormous cost.

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No one project embodies that cynicism quite like what Bostonians call 'The Big Dig. ' Infamous for its ever-increasing price tag, this massive highway tunneling effort was once ridiculed as the Big Mess, the Big Hole, the Big Pig, the Big Lie. But now, decades later the story looks more complicated.

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The tunnel does leak, but it is designed to. Seawater from the rocks above the tunnel drips through and is then pumped away.

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The tunnel is owned by Getlink, a French public company based in Paris.

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A rail tunnel was chosen over proposals for a very long suspension bridge, a bridge-and-tunnel link, and a combined rail-and-road link, and the project was privately financed by a consortium of British and French corporations and banks; the Anglo-French company operating the tunnel is called Eurotunnel.

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The speed limit for trains through the tunnel is 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph). The tunnel is owned and operated by the company Getlink, formerly Groupe Eurotunnel. The tunnel carries high-speed Eurostar passenger trains, LeShuttle services for road vehicles and freight trains.

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The Laerdal Tunnel in western Norway is the longest road tunnel in the world. It takes about 20 minutes to pass through the tunnel. Brightly colored lights placed every six kilometers help drivers stay alert.

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For a few worrying months, with lockdowns in places and travel quarantines required for most, the high-speed train service was operating a single service a day to Paris and Brussels from London, provided mainly for key workers. In 2019, the last “normal” year of travel, Eurostar recorded a healthy £62.4m profit.

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