Calais guide and accommodations

The Channel Tunnel – A true modern engineering feat

Those who said that you can’t build a bridge over the sea, where probably right. However no one said you can’t try building one under the sea. This is the case of the Channel Tunnel, which was built directly under the English Channel.

 

The Channel Tunnel is a 50km undersea rail tunnel, which links the United Kingdom and France. It runs beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover, connecting Folkestone, Kent, in England to Coquelles near Calais in northern France, and it’s the second longest undersea tunnel in the world after Japan’s Seikan Tunnel.

 

The idea for a cross-Channel fixed link existed as early as 1802, but the technological development of the era did not permit such engineering feat. Eventually the project was successfully organized by the Eurotunnel Group, founded in 1986, and began construction of the tunnel in 1988. Eleven tunnel boring machines working from both the UK and France cut through chalk marl to construct two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. By 1994 the tunnel commenced operating its passenger, freight and vehicle shuttle services, linking London to Paris and Brussels.

In 1996 the American Society of Civil Engineers identified the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.