Tunnel troubles
Q: Do you have any thoughts on how badly Eurotunnel handled the stuck train earlier this week, both for the passengers in the tunnel itself and those with 10-plus hour delays at the terminal? How can they be encouraged to improve communications and handling in the future?
Rich72
A: On Tuesday afternoon a Calais-to-Folkestone Eurotunnel Shuttle with around 100 cars came to a halt due to an alarm on board. The company tells me: “The Shuttle was brought to a controlled stop and inspected. As a precautionary measure, for their safety and comfort, we transferred the passengers on board to another shuttle, via the service tunnel (which is there for exactly that purpose) whilst we investigated the cause of the alarm.
“The service tunnel is a functional environment built as a 50km long “lifeboat” to provide a safe haven and enable an easy transfer to another train. The transfer train was another passenger shuttle – again a functional solution.
“Operations like this do take time, but they are for the safety of everyone and must be conducted carefully. Unfortunately, that means that other customers can suffer extended crossing times.
“However, we put on additional departures to try to reduce that as much as possible and offered the option of a transfer to a ferry as an alternative.
“Whilst some passengers experienced a longer journey than planned, everyone was kept safe at all times.
“We apologise to anyone who got caught up in the incident, but we stress that we will always put customer safety above everything.”
For the passengers stuck in the tunnel it must have been an alarming, stressful and exhausting experience. The Channel Tunnel is clearly a different prospect from a ferry sailing between Calais and Dover. There is an extra dimension: and that is the element of being deep below the sea. If a ferry suffers a technical problem in the Channel, as they do from time to time, people are fully aware of their surroundings.
Eurotunnel is often popular among people with concerns about mobility or anxiety, because motorists and passengers remain in their vehicles. Unlike on ferries, they don’t need to clear the car deck. But in Tuesday’s event these people were offloaded from the relative comfort and reassurance of their vehicle into a seemingly endless surface tunnel and then into a very spartan freight shuttle as their rescue.
It’s always important to learn from these experiences – and I hope that Eurotunnel will take away the need…
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