LEISURE &amp; ARTS: Mad Dogs and Frenchmen: `Chunnel' Politics ---- By Isabel Fonseca
Folkestone, England -- "We've been fighting the bastards since 1066" was the taxi driver's response to my faint-hearted suggestion that the Channel tunnel, one end of which we were making our way toward, signaled a new epoch in Anglo-French relations. Had he read my mind, or just the same edition of the Sun, which that morning had offered the Black Death, Paris streets "ankle deep in dog mess," and a comparatively high suicide rate (in France "suicide relieves the daily grind") among its 10 reasons to hate the French? "Froggy bashing" is nothing new here, though it does seem to have gained momentum. But the English objection to the tunnel is not a simple xenophobic reflex. Nationwide opinion polls about this, the biggest civil-engineering project in Europe this century, show convincingly that the English don't want a fixed link; that they like ferries and their island story; that they are worried about the costs to the environment and to themselves; that they are afraid of long, dark tunnels underwater; and of rabies, rats and terrorists crawling through, not to mention other undesirables, say, Europeans in general. The chalk marl under the Channel may be perfectly pliable; the spirit of gloom and resentment about the tunnel (though the disgruntled always are noisier than the positive or the indifferent) may prove more intractable.   Nevertheless, after at least 20 false starts since 1802, the project to join England to "Europe" is irreversibly under way. This attempt, which began life on Feb. 12, 1986, at Canterbury with the signing of the Tunnel Treaty by Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand (whose Rolls-Royce reportedly was met with flying eggs and chants of "Froggy, Froggy, Froggy, Out, Out, Out"), promises to be completed and open for business by June 1993. The British terminal may be seen, or at least imagined, below a ledge of dewy grass near Dover, dotted with poppies and daisies, with church spires in one direction and the white cliffs in another. Slow tractors are piling up walls of earth, cranes and pulleys hoist slabs of cast concrete through a jungle of rusting iron armatures. It looks like child's play, until you spot the men in hard hats: tiny beside their mechanical dinosaurs, they are the toys in the sandbox. Later, I get close to the toy chest, the construction camp in the shadow of Shakespeare Cliff, where nearly 1,000 of them live. "Farthingloe Village -- a new concept in community living" -- consists of 42 featureless blocks, spike-topped fencing, floodlights, security guards and warnings that "All personnel may be searched on leaving the premises"; residents pay #45, or $80, a week. But the men staying here -- most of them migrant laborers from Ireland and northern England -- are rumored to earn as much as $1,750 a week. Inside the tunnel it is cold and wet and dark, but mainly it's big. We few journalists, looking weedy as hell clutching our notebooks, trudge along in borrowed boots on a guided tour past some very large men (inwardly I take back all I thought, from the safety of the dewy green, poppy-sprayed ledge, about "toys"). The site manager gives us the big figures. The total length of each tunnel will be 32 miles, 25 of which will be under the sea. Seven thousand British and 4,000 French workers, on eight- to 12-hour shifts, have completed more than half of the job. Of the three tunnels -- two big ones for trains and another for service -- the smallest is the most advanced: They've bored more than 27 miles. The breakthrough is expected by November. The boring machines are fantastic: guided by satellite, gyroscope, computer and laser, these monsters, equipped with Cuisinart-style blades more than 16 feet wide, can chop and shred chalk at about 15 feet an hour, or 650-1,000 feet a week. We only hear of other machines, such as a giant pump in a 230-foot shaft that sucks the spoil slurry out of the tunnel, but we get some more big figures for the notebooks: Two thousand tons of spoil come out every hour; 500 tons of material go in; money, the press here reports, is being spent at a rate of $4.4 million a day. The 1986 treaty, which contains a clause prohibiting government subsidies for the tunnel, gave a 55-year concession to Eurotunnel, an Anglo-French partnership that commissioned Trans Manche Link, a consortium of five English contractors (Costain, Wimpey, Taylor Woodrow, Balfour Beatty and Tarmac) and five French (Boygues, Dumez, Societe Generale d'Entreprise, Societe Auxiliaire d'Entreprises, Spie Batignolles) to design and build the tunnel. The original forecast for the whole project was $8.5 billion; to the chagrin of the 206 banks involved, it now has reached $13.3 billion and many people estimate tunnel costs of $17.5 billion before we see the light at the end. All this for mad dogs and Frenchmen in 1993? Not quite. Nineteen ninety-two may mean an end to duty-free goods, but the tunnel will be more than a symbol of European unity; it will, transport analysts say, reinforce historically dominant trading links in the London-Frankfurt-Milan so-called "Golden Triangle," bolstering northern Europe as an economic entity at a time when its pre-eminence is being challenged by a strengthened Mediterranean "sunbelt," stretching from Barcelona to Trieste, and by new opportunities to the east. And for the rest of us, it will mean that you can climb aboard and whiz from London to Paris in three hours. There also is, however, a missing link. All leaders like to leave their monuments. For Mr. Mitterrand, with his pyramid and his own triumphal arch, the Chunnel is a new shape for the collection. For Mrs. Thatcher, in her way a choreographer or a sculptor, the monument may be seen in terms of negative space: The tunnel is perhaps her final proof that Britain's Victorian glory can be recaptured without spending a penny of public money. In the same week that the French government revealed its plans to spend 190 billion francs ($34 billion) on expanding its high-speed rail network, the prime minister announced that there will be no government subsidy for a fast train between London and the tunnel, in effect shelving plans for a much discussed new 70-mile link between London and Folkestone. Many observers believe that, by doing nothing to improve the nation's creaking rail system, Britain will lose out on the full benefits of the Chunnel. ("Britain is about to enter the 21st-century with the worst transport infrastructure in northern Europe," John Banham, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said recently. "We will become the butt of French jokes and be economically marginalized in Europe.") And travelers from France will have to adjust, perhaps by chewing gum rapidly, when they switch from the "grande vitesse" of the Chemins de Fer Francais to the homely milk route of British Rail, and sit out an extra half-hour until arrival at Waterloo.
full benefits;british industry;boring machines;tunnel treaty;dominant trading links;british rail;high-speed rail network;british terminal