CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20644, 16 February 1929, Page 20

CHANNEL TUNNEL.

AUTHOR EXPLAINS SCHEME. COST WOULD BE £190,000,000. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 5. Tile question of the Channel tunnel has again been brought up by the publication of Mr William Collard’s book, “ Proposed London and .Paris Railway,” and also by the recent formation of a private promoting company to deal with the preliminary finance. Mr Collard has been 30 years perfecting the details of the proposal. “ Every aspect of the scheme,” he said in an interview, “has been worked out to a fine point and passed by engineering experts. “ Now take the peculiar situation of this proposed railway. For sheer masses of population on which to draw nothing in the world can be compared, not even New York and Chicago. At one terminal you have a population of 8,000,000, at another 3,000,000. The population of Western Europe, including Britain, amounts to 240,000,000. “ The potential travellers out of these vast numbers will all converge on the two points, London and Paris, or possibly Boulogne for the northern countries — for the railway will run direct from Dover to Calais, and then past Boulogne to Paris. The actual distance is 253 miles, of which the tunnel will take up 44.

“ The company would undertake the building of the tunnel, and in my estimates I have allotted' a sum of £500,000 to the two companies, British and French, who have been engaged on the tunnel project up to now. “ What we are waiting and hoping for now is a reversal of the Committee of Imperial Defence’s decision of four years ago to reject the tunnel proposals. We do not anticipate any difficulties with regard to finance, although the cost will be enormous (in the region of £190,000,000). The tunnel will be 100 feet under the earth, and will mean the excavation of 300,000,000 cubic yards. This should mean work for 100,000 men."

A FOREIGNER’S VIEWS. A “ Foreigner,” writing to The Times, says:

“ I am persuaded that, could the I foreigner be able to travel straight into | London in his railway car from Paris, | Geneva, or Vienna without the night- | mare of a crossing, the number of travel- I lers to England would be enormous. (1 | am not afraid of the word.) The first | benefit for England would be the in- ' I crease of trade. One has scarcely an I idea in England of the preference the ; | foreigner has for the really beautiful i | English goods, which he gets with diffi- I | culty and witli small choice on the Con- ! f. tinent. As there is a rush to Paris ! | every season for new models and new I goods, so would there be a rush to Lon- | don, Thousands and thousands of men | and women would go to make their pur- | chases at London at the source. Being I able to get to London in a few hours I without fatigue, they would be able to | make their choice themselves in those I first-rate English firms which cannot be I beaten in the whole world. My opinion I is that with the tunnel English trade I would be more in touch with the Con- I tinent and profit a great deal by it. | “In what concerns sporting perform- I ances of the beautiful theatrical plays | London offers nowadays, how many I would find, it worth the while to jump I into a train for London to watch a hm ' I match or have a look at charming “ No”, I No, Nanette,” and come back next dav : I with a return ticket} could they do it easily? The tourist and hotel trade | would .profit on a large scale by the I tunnel. How many hundred thousands I of people never put foot on English soil I because of the crossing of the Channel, | but ivould be glad to go over and then | spend many a holiday in fascinating I Devon, lovely Wales, or grand Scotland ' I rather than admire for the eighth or | tenth time the Jungfrau, Mont Blanc, or I the Dolonites?” i ■>

TUNNEL OR BRIDGE. Sir E. Owen Williams, who came into prominence as chief engineer of the Wembley Exhibition, reminds Us, m a letter to the Times, that since the tunnel scheme was first mooted 60. years ago two significant social and scientific movements have emerged:—(a) Mechanical road transport; (b) economic possibilities of enormously increased spans of bridges.

‘ purpose of this project is clearly to facilitate the interchange of the social and economic life of our island with that of the Continent, and when railways were the almost exclusive means of transport the tunnel may have had favourable aspects. With the advent of mechanical road transport there can be no fulfilment of purpose unless this new factor is rationally accommodated. Conveying motor cars and lorries on trains is but a makeshift, and, on the other-hand, a road traffic tunnel 30 to 40 miles in length would be a nightmare.

“The alternative is a bridge accommodating both road and rail traffic, a task rivalling in magnitude the Suez or Panama Canals, an engineering problem of the first magnitude, but capable of solution, although involving spans each a mile or more in length; New York is now building a single span of tw< ? -ds of a mile, connecting it to a suburb. Thd cost would be colossal (although not necessarily must it be assumed fo be more than than that of the tunnel), but this must bo examined from a perspective adjusted to present-day expenditure on motor traffic. Its rare economic value, replacing the greatest ferry in the world, would render it unlikely to be emulated, leaving it a unique symbol of the resources of this civilisation. The military criticism of the invulnerabiity of the tunnel would 17c met, although, perhaps, it might be reversed to one of too complete vulnerability. “ It needs little imagination to picture the accession to the. importance of London when it is in direct communication by road and rail with the Cor.Silent and beyond.”