Twenty years old : happy birthday Eurotunnel

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This Tuesday, we celebrate the 20 years of Eurotunnel. A dream of 200 years became a reality on May 6, 1994 with the official opening of the Channel Tunnel by the Queen Elisabeth and french President François Mitterand. The Queen took the first highspeed British train to use the tunnel and arrived in Calais at the same time as the French president's train from Paris. That ended the insularity of Britain, although the British people do not feel at all the things like that.

We have come a long way ! The first project was imaginated in 1802 by French engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier put forward the first ever design for a cross-Channel fixed link based on the principle of a bored two-level tunnel. The real first test was attempted in 1973 : the construction and the operations of a railway tunnel under the Channel is finally launched at Chequers by Edward Heath, British Prime Minister, and Georges Pompidou, French President, when a Franco-British Channel Tunnel Treaty was signed. But in 1975, Harold Wilson, British Minister, announced that the project is stopped and withdrawn for financial reasons and in particular due to the oil crisis. But the truth lies elsewhere. As reported the Express.co.uk « An island is an island and should not be violated, wrote Labour Cabinet minister Barbara Castle when the scheme was dropped ».

Project was relaunched in 80’s when Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 at the head of a new Conservative government. A study conducted in 1984 by a group of British and French banks had ruled on the economic viability of the project, despite its enormous size. Thatcher wanted a road tunnel, Mitterrand a railway tunnel due to more security. In 1986, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand announced in Lille that the Eurotunnel bid presented by a Franco-British Consortium « France-Manche-Channel Tunnel Group », has been selected. The Channel Tunnel is a railway tunnel (French requirement), but his construction is only made by a private consortium (british requirement). Eurotunnel, who manages and operates the Channel Tunnel, is holding the Concession until 2086.

Conception

There are two 7.6-metre diameter rail tunnels, one by direction, plus a central tunnel for safety. Tunnel « South » go from France to England, the « North » tunnel for the reverse direction. The length of the tunnel is exactly 50.5 kilometres long between the portals at Beussingue and Castle Hill, but the exact length under the sea is 37.9 kilometres long.  Power is delivered to the trains via a catenary at 25 kV 50 Hz, and the train protection is provided by the French cab signalling system TVM430 (used by French TGV), given information directly to train drivers on a display screen on board. Two control centers manage the rail traffic on the both side, one british and one French, where there are also extensive surface-level terminal facilities and marshalling yards at Frethun in France and at Folkestone in the UK, as shown picture below.

 Folkestone terminal and departure of a truck shuttle (par Ed Clayton via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Operations

Many people are still confused between Eurotunnel and Eurostar ! Eurotunnel is a railway shuttle service for road transport : cars, trucks and bus which are loaded on special shuttle via a terminal facilities. The service is only provided between terminal at Calais-Fréthun and Folkeston (50 km). No shuttle go to London or Paris ! Eurostar is a passengers railway company which don't provide any shuttle services but well a railway services by high speed train between the « three capitals », Paris, Brussels and London, and, in the future, to and from Amsterdam (2016). There is therefore three different traffic in the tunnel : shuttle for road clients by Eurotunnel, international trains for rail passengers by Eurostar,  plus freight trains but at very low quantities.

 Boarding in a car shuttle (par dvdbramhall via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The finances : a troubled history

That was the sine qua non requirement of Thatcher : no public penny for the tunnel. The result was that on May 6, 1994, the final cost of the biggest tunnel in the world  reached 80% more over that its predicted budget of nearly £5billion. Financing costs were 140% higher than forecast because heavy interest charges on its £8bn of debt.

Financial situation became the main topic of conversation for the first ten years. The traffic of Eurostar and more espacially the freight services were largely surestimated. Revenue was dramatically less than expected : the question of the debt and the relation with creditors became highly critical. Losses incurred by many little shareholders is making life unbearable for Eurotunnel. 

In 2004, a dissident shareholder group succeeded in taking control of the board and, in 2005, the french Jacques Gounon took complete control becoming Chairman and Chief Executive. Despite a deal voted by shareholders in 2006, french court has placed Eurotunnel into bankruptcy protection. As reports Wikipedia, in May 2007 a new restructuring plan was approved by shareholders whereby Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup agreed to provide £2.8bn of long-term funding, the balance of the debt being exchanged for equity, and the shareholders agreed to waive the unlimited free travel and other perks that they had enjoyed. Following the restructuring, Eurotunnel was finally able to announce his first but  small net profit in 2007 and the return to financial health allowed to the company to announce in 2009 the anticipated voluntary redemption of some of its convertible debt. The financial story seems now to go to more quiet waters...

Today

Eurotunnel reports a traffic reaching 10 millions passengers by shuttles of cars and bus, plus 17.7 Mi tons of freight by shuttles of trucks. His main client Eurostar announced for the first time more than 10 millions annual passengers between the three capitals, that makes us more than 20 millions passengers per year in the tunnel. On average, only seven rail freight trains run through the tunnel each day – leaving a 43% unused capacity.  Only 1.3 Mi tons of goods are shipped by other rail companies, that make us a market share of 15% for rail transport, 85% for trucks…

Now Eurotunnel takes matters on hand for freight traffic when in 2009 was formed the company Europorte with some subsidiaries in UK and in France. 

Europorte in action in France (par rino54 via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In 2012, Eurotunnel acquired three ferries from the declined company Sea France which were chartered to start the MyFerryLink ferry company. However, this operation on sea depends on a decision of the British competition authorities who intend to renew the ban on vessels from ex-SeaFrance to dock in the port of Kent in the course of this year.

The last news was the dispute between Eurotunnel and his client Eurostar. The railway company was accused in june 2013 of spreading “totally false” information about track access charges. Eurostar said track charges accounted for 25% of the cost of passenger tickets. Earlier in may, the European Commission called for a cut of up to 50% in track fares, which it said were excessive. It threatened France and the UK, which regulate Eurotunnel, with legal action if they did not act within two months to cut costs of the tunnel. Ultimately 28 april, 2014, Eurotunnel announced that it will reduce its track access charges by 25% (1).

As reported Benedict Brogan in The Thelegraph, « the Chunnel Tunnel quickly proved itself to be an economic success that aided trade and provided greater opportunities for British businesses to take goods and services to Europe ». And he concludes: « the Channel Tunnel will mark not just our connection to the Continent, but how hard it is to break ». Happy birthday Eurotunnel…

(1) See at these link

Thalys - Key figures

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(version en français)
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France/Belgium - 1996 - high speed operator - FR, BE, DE, NL

Thalys is the name of an international high-speed train operator which operates between Paris and Brussels, with extension to Amsterdam, Cologne and Essen (DE). Originally, Thalys International was created as Westrail International, a Belgian cooperative company and joint subsidiary of the SNCF and the SNCB, which is joined by a subsidiary created specifically by the Dutch and German rail companies (Thalys Netherlands and the DB, respectively). The purpose of this company is to create and manage a high-speed network covering Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Its capital was divided up between SNCF (62%), SNCB/NMBS(28%) and Deutsche Bahn (10%). Netherlands Railways (NS), while not a shareholder, was responsible for operating the trains in the Netherlands.

High speed services began 2 june 1996 between Paris and Brussels when the entire classical traffic Benelux-Paris was transferred to an complete “TGV” services. From Paris, the trip to Brussels takes 2h03, and the trip to Amsterdam takes 4h47. Since December 1997, the route is fully provided by a High Speed Line between the two capitals. Travel time between Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam is reduced by one-half hour. Service is extended to Germany, with lines to Liège, Aix-La-Chapelle and Cologne. In Belgium, trains are also offered on regional routes, to Charleroi and Namur, and to Ghent, Bruges and Ostend. In 1999, Westrail International became Thalys International.

Services were created outside Paris to the south of France. Since december 1998, during winter Thalys Neige ("Snow") offers service to winter recreation areas from the Tarentaise Valley to Bourg St. Maurice.  And since 2001, a Thalys Soleil ("Sun") line was created, with service to Valence, extended in 2002 to Avignon-TGV and Marseille when the French high speed line “Mediterranée” was inaugurated. In 2015, Thalys run from Brussels, per day, 23 services to Paris, 12 to Amsterdam-Central and 6 to Cologne included 3 services extended to Düsseldorf and Essen. New services were still inaugurated from Lille for the first time, to Amsterdam and Genève. In April 2015, “regionals” Thalys from/to Ostend and Mons-Namur-Liège were cancelled due to a bad political deal in Belgium.

Rolling stock

Thalys uses a fleet of 26 TGV trains Alstom, compatible with different electrical characteristics of the four countries crossed and their respective signaling system. Since 2009, only the Belgian LN3 and LN4 and the Dutch HSL have ETCS level 2. LGV Paris-Brussels has the TVM system of SNCF and LN2 Leuven-Liège has the belgian system TBL2. To serve the entire network, the fleet must be compatible with the KVB and TVM (France), TBL1 and TBL2 (Belgium), ATB (Netherlands), the PZB (Germany) and finally ETCS 2 where this system is installed.

The first set of Thalys is the TGV Reseau, the same set than SNCF, which were built by Alstom between 1992 and 1996. These 9 trainsets triple-voltage (1.5kV-3kV-25kV) officiate between Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, but of course not in Germany, hence the name, PBA. They were also used on regional Thalys to Ostend and Liege-Namur-Mons, as well as seasonal Thalys to southern France and to the Alps. Thalys PBA are all properties of the SNCF. After refurbishment in 2009, the Thalys PBA offers 361 seats.

Seventeen other trains were built in 1996 and 1997 with the concept of TGV Duplex regarding power cars, whose aesthetic has been greatly improved. The two power cars at each end pull an articulated set similar to a french TGV. Technically these TGV named PBKA are very close to the TGV Reseau, the "K" indicating they reach Cologne and are therefore quadri-current, with the German 15kV in addition. The Thalys PBKA offers 377 seats.

Since 31 March 2015, DB ceased to be a shareholder although it continues to assist with Thalys operations in Germany, SNCF and SNCB became the sole shareholders with a 60:40 split. According the CEO, the new organization should allow to gain control and give the ability to go further and faster. Thalys has now a full control of his staff (recruitments) and is responsible for his rail-paths. Thalys International has transported nearly 7 million passengers in 2014 and realized a turnover up 3% to € 500 million.

See other pictures

Other post :
TGV Nord-Europe : Thalys becomes since 31 march a full railway company - 01/04/2015