1/10/2024 0 Comments Channel tunnelAccording to Forbes, the company was almost bankrupt after lockdowns and travel restrictions and needed to receive a €290 million bailout to stay afloat.William Shakespeare’s Richard II defined it as the “moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands” and, in fact, for England, the Channel has served as a defensive barrier against repeated attempts to invade its shores, whether it has been by the Spanish Armada, France’s Napoleon or military forces from Nazi Germany. This may have been exacerbated by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, in which ridership dropped. But for those who had been with the Chunnel from the beginning, it wasn't a smart investment. An analysis by transportation consultancy ALG contended that since 2009, Eurotunnel has seen enough profit to pay out dividends to its shareholders. While this sounds awful, the truth is that the Channel Tunnel's situation has recovered since its initial cost overruns. A 2018 financial analysis of the Channel Tunnel, entitled " The Channel Tunnel Cost Benefit Analysis after 20 years of operations," notes that an investor from the beginning of the project would have seen a -0.22% rate of return. In the first decade of its history, The New York Times reports that Eurotunnel had been burdened by debt that resulted in a financial restructuring in 2007. While the Channel Tunnel was a great civic work, the question of its long-term financial success is debatable. He was eventually granted asylum in Britain. The New York Times reported that in 2015, a 40-year-old Sudanese man even walked through the Channel Tunnel, risking death from being sucked under trains. Deaths have resulted as the human cargo is smuggled in horrid conditions. Most of these migrants had come from camps located in Calais and sought to migrate to the United Kingdom, where they thought they would have a better life. This problem came to a head in July 2015, when the BBC reported that 2,000 migrants attempted to pass through the Chunnel to Britain. Criminal gangs have organized illegal trafficking of migrants who have been desperate to seek a new life, usually from France to Britain. The truth is that the Channel Tunnel has been targeted as a major artery for illegal immigration. However, not all travelers through the Chunnel are authorized to be there. As noted earlier, Statista shows that over 20 million people use it annually. The Channel Tunnel represents a major conduit between nations. Still, the journal contends that this is not unusual for large infrastructure projects and, in fact, the Channel Tunnel compares "very favourably" with other huge transportation undertakings. It was also a one-shot, unique project, thus making true estimates hard to project. In addition, the project was behind schedule, which further escalated its cost. Even during construction, safety concerns over fire risks led to further design changes and pushed up costs. The Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development commented that the tunnel could be looked at as either a colossal engineering feat or one of the greatest "white elephants" in history. The French periodical Revue d'histoire des chemins de fer, or Railroad History Review, reports that much of the cost differential had to do with escalating construction costs and unbudgeted charges on financing interest. However, when completed, the budget had ballooned to over £10.116 billion (also in 2020 currency). An article published in the Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development reports that the original projected cost of the project was £4.55 billion (in 2020 currency). The Channel Tunnel was a feat of engineering, so naturally it was very expensive. Let's take a look at some of the little-known truths about the Channel Tunnel. Yet it wasn't as simple as digging a hole and hoping for the best. This ambitious project realized centuries of dreaming to reconnect Britain to the mainland. This changed in the late 20th century, when one of the most remarkable engineering works in history was created: the Channel Tunnel, also called Eurotunnel and informally nicknamed the Chunnel. The English Channel has severed Britain from Europe so that travel between the two usually had to be done by watercraft. At that time, the English Channel was flooded and assumed the shape that we are familiar with today. The last time the two lands were connected was reported by the BBC to be about 6,100 years ago, during the Mesolithic period. The more ice, the lower the sea, at which times the English Channel became a broad land bridge. In fact, according to the U.K.'s Natural History Museum, since at least 950,000 years ago Britain has been intermittently connected with the mainland based on the vicissitudes of the ice ages. The English Channel, however, is not eternal.
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