Economics and Politics
Half the air traffic at Dublin Airport is to Britain, with 8,300,000 passengers per annum. The Dublin to London air route is one of the busiest international routes with 1.974 million passengers in 2007, and there were about 12.3 million air passengers between the republic and the United Kingdom (2007).
The Channel Tunnel has failed so far to generate the original passenger numbers expected (partially because of low cost airlines - an industry which did not exist when the project was underway). It now has nine million passengers per year, more than air travel, if only counting those who have destinations near London, Paris or Brussels.
The Channel Tunnel also illustrates the funding problem that a tunnel cannot be built and funded in stages, so cost over-runs (such as experienced on the Channel Tunnel) cannot be spread over time. Construction would also take a long time to complete, so the project would be an expensive, long-term, high risk investment.
Opposition to the tunnel might be mounted by powerful corporate interests, particularly ferry companies, shipping lines and airlines. NIMBY local interest groups and environmental groups might oppose individual infrastructure changes.
Various Irish government studies have concluded that an Irish Sea tunnel is, as yet, economically unfeasible. The benefit compared to air and ferry travel does not justify the cost.
Read more about this topic: Tusker Tunnel
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“The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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