Travel chaos continues at Euro tunnel

Monday, July 25, 2022

The tourists from the United Kingdom hoping to travel to France have endured a third day of disruption as traffic chaos turned the Eurotunnel into a “hotspot of holiday hell”. The drivers were stuck for several hours on roads around Folkestone after the M20 was turned into a “lorry park” due to Operation Brock, the system designed to relieve congestion at busy times.

Transport experts said the traffic management system – introduced during Brexit – was causing “massive disruption” and urged the government to come up with a long-term solution.

Steve Gooding, the director of the RAC Foundation, said that it is the high time we replaced the sticking plaster with a resilient solution worthy of the name.

The authorities in Dover declared a critical incident as holidaymakers reported waiting as long as 21 hours to reach the ports. Volunteers were drafted in to hand out emergency supplies such as food and water to weary travellers.

The disruption sparked a war of words across the Channel as British authorities accused their French counterparts of not sufficiently staffing the border, while Calais politicians blamed Brexit for the additional checks.

The problems on the roads appear to have exacerbated delays at the border. A bad road collision on the M20 on Friday caused long tailbacks near the ports, while Operation Brock created bumper-to-bumper jams on local roads.

Jack Cousens, the head of roads policy for the AA, said that the drivers were waiting for several hours in traffic before reaching the Eurotunnel. He added that Dover has now recovered, but Folkestone has become the hotspot of holiday hell.

The Port of Dover said it had processed 72,000 passengers – more than 200 miles of tourist and freight traffic – since Friday. Its partners worked around the clock, it said, to clear “huge volumes” of vehicles overnight on Saturday.

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