document: Nevertheless , after at least 20 false starts since 1802 , the project to join England to `` Europe '' is irreversibly under way . This attempt , which began life on Feb. 12 , 1986 , at Canterbury with the signing of the Tunnel Treaty by Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand -LRB- whose Rolls-Royce reportedly was met with flying eggs and chants of `` Froggy , Froggy , Froggy , Out , Out , Out '' -RRB- , promises to be completed and open for business by June 1993 . The British terminal may be seen , or at least imagined , below a ledge of dewy grass near Dover , dotted with poppies and daisies , with church spires in one direction and the white cliffs in another . Slow tractors are piling up walls of earth , cranes and pulleys hoist slabs of cast concrete through a jungle of rusting iron armatures . It looks like child 's play , until you spot the men in hard hats : tiny beside their mechanical dinosaurs , they are the toys in the sandbox . Later , I get close to the toy chest , the construction camp in the shadow of Shakespeare Cliff , where nearly 1,000 of them live . `` Farthingloe Village -- a new concept in community living '' -- consists of 42 featureless blocks , spike-topped fencing , floodlights , security guards and warnings that `` All personnel may be searched on leaving the premises '' ; residents pay # 45 , or $ 80 , a week . But the men staying here -- most of them migrant laborers from Ireland and northern England -- are rumored to earn as much as $ 1,750 a week . Inside the tunnel it is cold and wet and dark , but mainly it 's big . We few journalists , looking weedy as hell clutching our notebooks , trudge along in borrowed boots on a guided tour past some very large men -LRB- inwardly I take back all I thought , from the safety of the dewy green , poppy-sprayed ledge , about `` toys '' -RRB- . The site manager gives us the big figures . The total length of each tunnel will be 32 miles , 25 of which will be under the sea . Seven thousand British and 4,000 French workers , on eight - to 12-hour shifts , have completed more than half of the job . Of the three tunnels -- two big ones for trains and another for service -- the smallest is the most advanced : They 've bored more than 27 miles . The breakthrough is expected by November . The boring machines are fantastic : guided by satellite , gyroscope , computer and laser , these monsters , equipped with Cuisinart-style blades more than 16 feet wide , can chop and shred chalk at about 15 feet an hour , or 650-1 ,000 feet a week . We only hear of other machines , such as a giant pump in a 230-foot shaft that sucks the spoil slurry out of the tunnel , but we get some more big figures for the notebooks : Two thousand tons of spoil come out every hour ; 500 tons of material go in ; money , the press here reports , is being spent at a rate of $ 4.4 million a day . The 1986 treaty , which contains a clause prohibiting government subsidies for the tunnel , gave a 55-year concession to Eurotunnel , an Anglo-French partnership that commissioned Trans Manche Link , a consortium of five English contractors -LRB- Costain , Wimpey , Taylor Woodrow , Balfour Beatty and Tarmac -RRB- and five French -LRB- Boygues , Dumez , Societe Generale d'Entreprise , Societe Auxiliaire d'Entreprises , Spie Batignolles -RRB- to design and build the tunnel . The original forecast for the whole project was $ 8.5 billion ; to the chagrin of the 206 banks involved , it now has reached $ 13.3 billion and many people estimate tunnel costs of $ 17.5 billion before we see the light at the end . All this for mad dogs and Frenchmen in 1993 ? Not quite . Nineteen ninety-two may mean an end to duty-free goods , but the tunnel will be more than a symbol of European unity ; it will , transport analysts say , reinforce historically dominant trading links in the London-Frankfurt-Milan so-called `` Golden Triangle , '' bolstering northern Europe as an economic entity at a time when its pre-eminence is being challenged by a strengthened Mediterranean `` sunbelt , '' stretching from Barcelona to Trieste , and by new opportunities to the east . And for the rest of us , it will mean that you can climb aboard and whiz from London to Paris in three hours . There also is , however , a missing link . All leaders like to leave their monuments . For Mr. Mitterrand , with his pyramid and his own triumphal arch , the Chunnel is a new shape for the collection . For Mrs. Thatcher , in her way a choreographer or a sculptor , the monument may be seen in terms of negative space : The tunnel is perhaps her final proof that Britain 's Victorian glory can be recaptured without spending a penny of public money . In the same week that the French government revealed its plans to spend 190 billion francs -LRB- $ 34 billion -RRB- on expanding its high-speed rail network , the prime minister announced that there will be no government subsidy for a fast train between London and the tunnel , in effect shelving plans for a much discussed new 70-mile link between London and Folkestone . Many observers believe that , by doing nothing to improve the nation 's creaking rail system , Britain will lose out on the full benefits of the Chunnel . -LRB- `` Britain is about to enter the 21st-century with the worst transport infrastructure in northern Europe , '' John Banham , the director general of the Confederation of British Industry , said recently . `` We will become the butt of French jokes and be economically marginalized in Europe . '' -RRB- And travelers from France will have to adjust , perhaps by chewing gum rapidly , when they switch from the `` grande vitesse '' of the Chemins de Fer Francais to the homely milk route of British Rail , and sit out an extra half-hour until arrival at Waterloo . This , though , is not a matter of time or money , it 's `` an attitude problem . '' While the number of French shareholders in the project has risen from 210,000 to 436,000 , the number of British investors has remained at 100,000 ; and while 15,000 Kent residents marched on Westminster in protest against the desecration of their villages , there was keen competition among French towns to have the new fast train service run through their region . Despite the gift packs of French and English wine -LRB- more unfavorable comparisons -RRB- on sale just beneath the `` I dig the tunnel '' stickers at the Eurotunnel Exhibition Centre , most Britons seem to share , or will have to learn to live in regretful memory of , Gladstone 's view that England should be `` happy that the wise dispensation of Providence has cut her off by that streak of silver sea ... partly from dangers , absolutely from the temptations which attend upon the local neighbourhood of the Continental nations . '' -- Ms. Fonseca is a writer based in London .
extractive_keyphrases: british rail tunnel treaty british terminal boring machines full benefits british industry dominant trading links
abstractive_keyphrases: high-speed rail network