Europe: Chunneling Choice

After 162 years of debate and divagation, fears and false starts, France and Britain last week decided to connect island and mainland with a crossChannel tunnel. The governments approved a recommendation made last September by an Anglo-French study group that found a railroad tunnel “technically possible and economically desirable.” But still to be answered were two major questions. Should the “chunnel” (for channel tunnel) be bored through the chalk of the channel bottom, or should 23 miles of segmented tubes be laid across the intervening seabed? And how would the $448 million project be financed? Chunnel buffs talked excitedly of the first auto carrying train zipping smoothly from Folkestone to Sangatte by 1970. That seemed somewhat overoptimistic, but at least the first big hurdle has been cleared.