Channel Tunnel Rail Link, planning, design and associated urban development

Abstract

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) is UK's first high-speed railway, 109 km long with new stations at Ebbsfleet in North Kent, Stratford in East London and enlarged international stations at Ashford, Kent and St. Pancras. The CTRL is the largest civil engineering infrastructure project currently being constructed in the UK with a budget of £5.3 billion (S$14.8 billion). The Project is split into two sections. Section 1, 70 km long from the Channel Tunnel to Fawkham Junction in North Kent is scheduled for completion and operational running of Eurostar trains by September 2003. Section 2, 39 km long, completes the Link from North Kent to St Pancras in central London and is programmed to be operational in January 2007. The leaseholder of the CTRL and the owner of the Eurostar fleet is London and Continental Railways Ltd. The client subsidiary responsible for awarding and administering the contracts is Union Railways (North) Ltd. (URN). The Project Managers for the CTRL are Rail Link Engineering (RLE), a consortium of Bechtel, Systra, Arup and Hal-crow. URN adopts the New Engineering Contract, recommended by the Latham Report published in UK in July 1994. The contractor is incentivised to reduce costs and to complete on or ahead of programme by agreeing a Target Cost. 25% of the whole CTRL is in tunnels (26 km), of this 20 km are in twin bored tunnels. The bored tunnelling work is split into 4 contracts: (1) C320 a 2.5 route km twin tunnel under the Thames from North Kent to Thurrock to the east of London. (2) C250 a 5.3 route km twin tunnel from Dagenham Dock east of London to Barrington Road Ventilation Shaft in East London. (3) C240 a 4.7 route km twin tunnel from Stratford Box to Barrington Road Shaft. (4)C220 a 7.5 route km twin tunnel from Stratford Box to the West Portal at King's Cross/St. Pancras. Major benefits will result from the opening of the CTRL, Paris will be a 2 h 20 min train ride from London and Brussels will be only 2 h train ride. The CTRL when complete will have a dramatic effect on domestic train services halving the journey times from parts of Kent to London. The direct regeneration and development benefits from the CTRL arise as a result of the new stations on the line and the connections to existing stations. The route of the CTRL was selected to maximise the economic impact of the line on some of the most deprived areas of the UK. The CTRL aims to be a catalyst for new investment in the former industrial sites of East London and the Thames estuary. It will form the new spine for regenerating this area now known as the 'Thames Gateway'. Major developments around the stations at St Pancras and Stratford in London and Ebbsfleet and Ashford in Kent will deliver £8.0 billion (S$14.8 billion) worth of new investment, involving 16,000 new homes and up to 112,000 new jobs. (A). Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124500.