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Proponents estimated the construction cost at US$150 million.

There was another proposal in 1929, but nothing came of this discussion and the idea was shelved. Churchill expressed his enthusiasm for the project again in an article for the Daily Mail on 12 February 1936, "Why Not A Channel Tunnel?" In the 1920s, Winston Churchill had advocated for the Channel Tunnel, using that exact name in an essay entitled "Should Strategists Veto The Tunnel?" The essay was published on 27 July 1924 in the Weekly Dispatch, and argued vehemently against the idea that the tunnel could be used by a Continental enemy in an invasion of Britain.

The French did not take the idea seriously, and nothing came of Lloyd George's proposal. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend against another German attack. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project.Ī 1907 film, Tunnelling the English Channel by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès, depicts King Edward VII and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the English Channel. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns asserting that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. On the French side, a similar machine dug from Sangatte. On the English side a diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff. In 1881, the British railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin and Alexandre Lavalley, a French Suez Canal contractor, were in the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company that conducted exploratory work on both sides of the Channel. In 1865, a deputation led by George Ward Hunt proposed the idea of a tunnel to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day, William Ewart Gladstone.Īround 1866, William Low and Sir John Hawkshaw promoted ideas, but apart from preliminary geological studies none were implemented.Īn official Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a cross-Channel railway tunnel. Thomé de Gamond explored several schemes and, in 1856, he presented a proposal to Napoleon III for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez to East Wear Point with a port/airshaft on the Varne sandbank at a cost of 170 million francs, or less than £7 million. In 1839, Aimé Thomé de Gamond, a Frenchman, performed the first geological and hydrographical surveys on the Channel, between Calais and Dover. Mathieu-Favier's design envisaged a bored two-level tunnel with the top tunnel used for transport and the bottom one for groundwater flows. In 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining engineer, put forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches, and an artificial island positioned mid-Channel for changing horses. Since at least 1997, people have attempted to use the tunnel to travel illegally to the UK, causing many migrants to head towards Calais and creating ongoing issues of human rights violations, illegal immigration, diplomatic disagreement, and violence. Both fires and cold weather have temporarily disrupted its operation. Since its construction, the tunnel has experienced a few mechanical problems. The cost finally amounted to £9 billion (equivalent to £ billion in ), well over its predicted budget. Valued at £5.5 billion in 1985, it was at the time the most expensive construction project ever proposed. The eventual successful project, organised by Eurotunnel, began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994. Plans to build a cross-Channel fixed link appeared as early as 1802, but British political and media pressure over the compromising of national security had disrupted attempts to build a tunnel.

The tunnel carries high-speed Eurostar passenger trains, the Eurotunnel Shuttle for road vehicles This compares with 11.7 million passengers, 2.6 million lorries and 2.2 million cars by sea through the Port of Dover. The Channel Tunnel is owned and operated by Getlink.

The speed limit for trains through the tunnel is 160 km/h (100 mph). At, the tunnel has the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world, and is the third longest railway tunnel in the world. At its lowest point, it is deep below the sea bed and below sea level. It is the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland. The Channel Tunnel (French: Le tunnel sous la Manche), also referred to as the Eurotunnel or Chunnel, is a railway tunnel that connects Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) with Coquelles (Hauts-de-France, France) beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover.