Channel Bridge Is Rival To Tunnel

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29173, 6 April 1960, Page 24

Channel Bridge Is Rival To Tunnel

(IV.Z. Press Association—

LONDON, April 4. Britons were greeted this morning with, dramatic pictures of a bridge across the English Channel Artists' impressions of the £2OO million bridge, that would carry five lanes of cars, two of rail and two of motorcycle and cycle traffic were blazoned across many newspapers. With two exceptions the newspapers carried details of the plan without the customary outburst of comment, either for or against, surrounding such a controversial scheme. The announcement of the bridge plan follows hard on the heels of the publicity given to a rival scheme—the Channel tunnel. One of the companies behind the idea of a bridge is Britain’s Dorman Long, builders of the Sydney harbour bridge. The others are the Chapman and Scott Corporation of the United States and the Compagnie Francaise d’Enterprises. They claim the bridge could be completed in five years. Those with “tunnel” interests claim their scheme would cost about £9O million and would take three years to complete. According to the “Daily Mail” the chairman of the tunnel study group (Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick) claims that a yearly revenue of £4O million would be needed to make the bridge a financial success. He says that

■» maintenance costa of a tunnel would be far lower than those of a bridge: But the man behind Dorman Long’s decision that a bridge was possible, 60-year-old Mr John Pain, does not agree with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick. He says maintenance costs would be. less and that, if it were taken care of, the bridge could last indefinitely. The bridge, 110 ft wide, would be about 200 ft above the water —high enough for the Queen Mary to pass underneath. Columnists of Lord Beaverbrook’s “Daily Express” and “Sunday Express” have attacked both the tunnel and bridge schemes. The proposed line for the bridge is from the South Foreland, near Dover to a point just south-west of Sangatte, near Calais, a distance of 21 miles and the narrowest point in the channel. With approaches, the bridge would be 25 miles long. The central five-lane highway would be 49ft wide and the motor-cycle tracks 13ft wide. It is estimated that it would take about 3000 men to build it in five years.