31 years old born and bred Parisian here. I've been to the UK like 8 times and I certainly would not have done it this many times if it wasn't for the Eurostar. Even took a day trip once to watch some football in London and slept in my own bed back home the same evening. I'm really grateful for the Eurotunnel.

It's absolutely no white elephant - the quote was from the 1990s when people were still getting used to the idea that you could travel from the UK to the continent by train, even taking your car with you.

If you are interested in engineering look up about the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland

I can eat breakfast at home, at the end of a tiny branch line in North east England. Jump on 2 trains, have lunch in London. Change trains and have dinner in Paris. So 3 trains and still be working most of the time on a laptop and travel about 500 miles.

The Tunnel was dug by both Countries starting at the same time either side of the Channel and meeting in the middle

Cars, buses, Lorry’s all fit on trains through the Tunnel as well as passengers trains! It’s not a White Elephant, it’s made journeying between UK and France virtually effortless and so much quicker than getting the ferry.

I would not call 40  trains a day and 10 million passengers a year a white elephant.

Watching Americans learn about this stuff is like watching a baby learn to walk for the first time.

In 2026,with oill prices rising, an electric train under the English Channel seems rather useful. Imho🖖🇪🇺🇬🇧

Please don’t dwell on the comment from many years ago about the Channel tunnel being a ‘White Elephant’. It is incredibly well used every day. In all my experiences travelling on Eurostar, St Pancras is always absolutely buzzing with people waiting to head off for holidays or business via this train. It is a great way to travel.

I need to add ....My old boss Stuart Lang was the chief (Land) surveyor who made sure the two tunnels lined up from the UK side. Using an optical theodolite years before GPS and electronic distance measuring so the maths (not math) he used were phenomenal. We are talking about £1000 of equipment and brains rather than £50000 plus of equipment nowadays. Stuart was an Aussie but we won't hold that against him. A lovely man. He moved back to Oz early 2000's so I hope he is still with us. He would be late 80's early 90's by now. Old school proper engineer learnt so much in the 2 years I worked with him. Computer tech was just coming in in his time but he was the person who Leica and especially Trimble went to to ask what do we need to do/add to the systems and does it work. All tech needs the man/women who knows in the first place.
Maybe being harsh on the last comment but deep down I don't think not understanding how tunnels work is that complicated. Apologies if I overstepped the mark

The Power Plant thing isn't to be underestimated either.
Before streaming was a thing, a LARGE portion of the U.K would watch Eastenders (A British soap opera) at the same time, and at the weekend there would generally be a big cliffhanger right at the end.  After the episode finished a significant portion of the country would put the kettle on (2-3kW each) for a cup of tea/coffee .  Operators at The National Grid monitoring stations would watch the end of the show, and watch the power demand spike, often engaging all U.K power production, and if it looked like we'd need more, we'd borrow it from France through the tunnel for 10-20 minutes.

I was amazed by your earlier video showing how confused you were by the whole concept of a tunnel under water. You still seem to be surprisingly struggling to understand how relatively common the concept is!

Civil engineer here - nice to see appreciation for what we do.

I used to be a coach driver in the 90,s
I did day trips to france all the time,used the channel tunnel hundreds of times,its an experience!

I'm so glad you found out how tunnels work.

It is a joint tunnel built and run by the French and the British. Dwe met in the middle.

I do think we built the first tunnel under water. It was under the Themes in London back in the 19th century

The "graffiti" you mentioned at the tunnel entrance is a giant person looking through binoculars.  I think it looks great.

Most Americans don’t know it is a train. They think people actually drive in the tunnel.

I previously worked for a large organisation in central London. Our Director of Finance was formerly the Financial Controller for EuroTunnel, the company which built the English section of the Channel Tunnel. He was literally in charge of all the expenditure for building half the tunnel. Lovely man who had fascinating stories and was also very down-to-earth.