UK: The Channel Tunnel risks remaining ‘essentially inaccessible’ to rail freight without investment to enhance the loading gauge of the conventional main line through Kent which connects it to Wembley and Daventry, the CEO of Eurotunnel’s parent company Getlink has warned.
Speaking at an event in Coquelles on December 14 looking ahead to the anniversary next May marking 30 years since the Channel Tunnel was opened, Yann Leriche said that the failure to develop rail freight — not to be confused with the LeShuttle Freight rolling motorway service running between the Cheriton and Coquelles terminals — over the Eurotunnel infrastructure was ‘a historical paradox’.
‘We have a unique railway between the UK and continental Europe, yet it is basically inaccessible for rail freight’, he insisted. He cited the loading gauge issue as the largest single impediment to growing the market.
In 2023 to date, Eurotunnel has handled on average just four freight trains per day through the Channel Tunnel, almost all of which have been routed via the High Speed 1 line to and from Barking in east London. This limited throughput means that the Channel Tunnel is carrying just 1 million tonnes of freight per annum, compared to a pre-opening forecast of 10 million tonnes annually.
A recurring theme
Development of a route able to carry standard container trains and swapbodies between the interchange yard at Dollands Moor south of Ashford and the key freight hub at Wembley has been high on freight operators’ wish list since the 1990s.
That said, for most of the first 15 years of the Channel Tunnel, the primary obstacle to growing freight services was concern over the security of wagons amid an illegal migration crisis. Once that problem was largely resolved by enhancing the security of railway property around Calais, attention turned to using HS1 — fully opened in 2007 — as an alternative means to get UIC-gauge wagons to London, where a terminal at Ripple Lane near Barking was developed with links both to HS1 and the NR network.
However, over the intervening 15 years, freight has made little impact on HS1. Eurotunnel officials report that there is limited scope to further develop traffic over the high speed route because freight paths are generally only available at night, and operators are wary of the commercial consequences of incurring a delay, which could lead to substantial penalty charges being levied by concessionaire HS1 Ltd.
As result, focus has once again returned to the question of achieving W12 clearance to a location north of London.
Supporting ‘levelling up’
According to Leriche, ensuring rail access to Wembley for standard intermodal vehicles is key. ‘We need to focus on getting wagons to Wembley at least, and ideally to Daventry’, he told Rail Business UK. ‘Not least because the British logistics industry is located primarily to the north of London.’ Barking is therefore not an attractive long-term alternative to the gauge enhancement programme, he felt, adding that this would contribute to the UK government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.
Getlink now sees an opportunity to tap into funding opportunities theoretically made available by the recent cancellation of HS2 Phase 2 to deliver the W12 scheme, but it is clearly frustrated that this did not merit inclusion in the subsequent ‘Network North’ portfolio of schemes issued by the Department for Transport.
‘This would be a means to support the economic development of the north of England by giving exporters access to the Channel Tunnel by rail in a way they do not have today’, Leriche said. ‘We are now making an urgent call for action.’
£50m scheme
One of the challenges Getlink has faced in the past when trying to make headway with gauge clearance work is what the company saw as unnecessary complexity added by NR.
Frustrated by initial cost estimates for the work which Getlink said exceeded £600m, in 2022 the company commissioned consultancy Volterra to give an independent assessment of the cost of modifying the one core route via Maidstone, rather than the three first recommended for redundancy by NR.
Volterra suggested that the work could be achieved at an estimated cost of approximately £42m, while offering very high value for money, up to £9·74 for every £1. This analysis included additional exports resulting from the scheme, which could increase UK trade in goods with the EU by 1·3%. In a submission to the Transport Select Committee in August 2023, Getlink drew a comparison with the planned remodelling of Ely Junction, which has an estimated cost of £466m and a lower benefit:cost ratio of 4·9:1.
On October 6, the government confirmed that remodelling of Ely North and Haughley junctions would be taken forward under Network North. Getlink has since rounded up the projected cost of the Volterra-supported scheme to £50m to reflect the impact of higher inflation and other external risks.
NR inches forward
Meanwhile, NR has agreed to begin some improvements to clearances on the Dollands Moor – Ashford – Maidstone – London corridor. These are intended to move towards delivering a W9A loading gauge, which NR has suggested could support larger containers and swapbodies, but insiders at Getlink remain sceptical that this will be sufficient to reassure operators and drive growth.
‘We’re not convinced W9A is a well-defined loading gauge. It makes no sense to do this incrementally given the modest cost of W12 on that route’, one senior figure told Rail Business UK.
The Channel Tunnel operator had seen signs of optimism that the nascent Great British Railways body could be receptive to pushing the scheme forward, but Getlink is doubtful about further progress being made before a general election. ‘We are already turning away operators in Germany who want to move their containers to the UK by rail’, Leriche emphasised in Calais.
In a statement issued on December 20, Network Rail said its estimated cost for work equivalent to that proposed by Volterra would be £80m. It added that ‘we want to accelerate the shift to rail and improving our network’s capability to move bigger loads is a key part of that work, especially in unlocking the potential of the Channel Tunnel. Getlink has presented an ambitious plan that we support but it will take time and money. For a more modest investment, we can unlock substantial opportunities for Tunnel freight that could be delivered within the next five years, and are actively seeking to secure the funding.’
