AFTER years of being derided as the crazed musings of cranks and dreamers, the possibility of a tunnel linking Jersey to Guernsey and France is now firmly back on the agenda.
At a breakfast briefing organised by the Jersey Chamber of Commerce yesterday, world experts on so-called “sub-sea fixed links” from Scandinavia explained why it was not just possible, but desirable.
They said that a tunnel could be completed in around seven years at a cost of between £10,000 and £50,000 per metre, with journey times of 15 minutes between Jersey and Guernsey, and 17 minutes between Jersey and France.
The distance between Jersey and France is around 20km, so the capital cost of the southern tunnel might range from between £200 million and £1 billion.
It was argued that a tunnel, as improbable as it sounded, could offer a viable solution to many of the potentially existential challenges the islands faced.
Those solutions included enabling workers to commute from areas of France with high unemployment to stoke the economy and care for an ageing population, securing food and freight supply lines and easing inflationary pressures.
A tunnel could also address the housing crisis, which would be exacerbated by the thousands of extra workers needed over the coming decades, without having to concrete over many more green fields or constructing skyscrapers.
There was potential, the audience was told, to deliver affordable public services in collaboration with Guernsey and France without the need for significant tax raises, to offer a much-needed boost for tourism and improve the quality of life of Islanders.
Other economic spin-offs included Jersey Airport becoming a major hub for people in northern France and Guernsey.
In October last year, Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel announced that the government was investigating the feasibility of a bridge or tunnel to France.
Addressing the audience yesterday, Deputy Morel warned that the islands could not leave it until it was too late to start making critical decisions.
“As with any challenge like this, it is something that creeps up on you,” he said. “Every day it becomes slightly more serious.”
Chamber chief executive Murray Norton said that it was important to start a sensible conversation that “could be the start of a very long journey” – despite the many “naysayers” who had sought to rubbish the idea on social media.
“We are always told to think big, so it’s right that we have this conversation today,” he said, adding “Do we have tunnel vision or a tunnel vision?”
Guernseyman Martin Dorey, who has championed the idea of a tunnel linking the islands and France for the past six or seven years and was instrumental in organising yesterday’s event, said that he had first started thinking about a fixed link when president of the Sarnian Chamber of Commerce.
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People kept asking him “what the hell are you doing about connectivity”, he explained, adding that he had considered all sorts of ideas, from cable cars and airships to bridges and a tunnel, and, after some further inquiries and conversations, a tunnel emerged as the optimal solution.
“It’s odd being in a room in which people are not laughing at me,” he joked.
“The key to changing people’s minds is to have the most credible people in front of you and these are the most credible people in the world. You can say what you like on social media, you can shout at the sky, but these are the people you need to listen to. We have brought these people over here, so please listen to them.”
The Nordic experts were Faroe Islands Tunnel Corporation chief executive Teitur Samuelsen, Norwegian Tunnelling Network chief executive Avild Petter Søvik and Professor Eivind Grøv, chief scientist at Norwegian tunnel and underground technology experts SINTEF, who has been a consultant of many tunnel projects in Scandinavia and beyond.
Mr Dorey said that the islands were vulnerable for several reasons – they were heavily reliant on finance, were “sub-scale on everything” so could not benefit from economies of scale or, for example, attract global artists to perform, had a very narrow tax base, an ageing population and insufficient housing or labour to meet essential needs, an existing housing shortage and elusive GDP growth.
“If you have to raise tax by 50%, the Channel Islands are dead in the water,” he said. “Let’s build a tunnel and make this thing happen.”
He suggested that journey times would be 15 and 17 minutes to Guernsey and France respectively and that the payback on the capital investment would be between 16 and 35 years.
Stressing that the islands would have to work together, he added: “These things are income generators.”
Deputy Morel said that the government had done a lot of modelling work looking at how Jersey’s population would have to grow to maintain the current levels of economic growth and prosperity to fund public services in 2040, when a much greater percentage of the population would be retired.
In June, the government published its Common Population Policy, which predicted that the Island would need a population of around 150,000 people by 2040 to maintain living standards if no other measures, such as increasing productivity, were taken. That would include, for example, an estimated extra 3,000 health and care workers.
“Now is a really important time to talk about this,” the minister said. “If we want to tackle the housing crisis, this is really one way we could do that. If we want to make sure food arrives every day, then this is one way to do that.”
He added: “Like many people, I said, ‘Yes, whatever’, but I am not one of those people now. I believe that if you put in the infrastructure, people will come.”
Have tunnels been successful elsewhere?
Teitur Samuelsen said that the Faroe Islands’ tunnel network, which included a subterranean roundabout that became an internet sensation after going viral globally, had transformed the islands – and had been delivered on time and on budget. He explained that 90% of Islanders were now connected, with families able to get together and the fishing fleet able to operate more efficiently because of good road/tunnel connections to the main export port. Mr Samuelsen said that the tunnel had had a hugely positive social impact.
“It will develop the society very much,” he added.
He explained that the main issue was managing risks, especially financial and geological. The Faroes managed to agree a fixed cost that was not affected by fluctuating interest rates and had used experienced experts.
Avild Petter Søvik said: “We have been doing this a very long time and we are still doing them.” Norway has 70 tunnels, 40 of them sub-sea links.
Professor Eivind Grøv said that it was impossible to know the exact detail of the geology under the sea, but initial investigations showed that near both islands the rocks were like those in Scandinavia and should pose few problems. He added that there would need to be detailed geological testing.
