PUBLIC WORKS : London Greets Two Potential White Elephants

The British tend to lag in public works projects, with superhighways, high-speed train lines and airport links running years behind equivalent construction on the Continent. Much-needed projects take years to be formulated and then are subjected to complaints by residents and changes by politicians. Interminable arguments, revisions and delays are often the result.

It was with some sense of irony, therefore, that two massive projects in London were inaugurated this week--but with almost no fanfare.

The reason for the subdued tone was that both major projects may turn out to be huge, lumbering white elephants. Both are expected to be underused in the foreseeable future.

The more prominent of the two openings was at London’s Waterloo Station: the unveiling of an addition intended to serve as the terminus for the Paris-London express trains that will use the Channel Tunnel.

The dramatic, much-admired, serpentine structure involves a graceful, arcing steel-and-glass dome over a curving platform. The new $200-million terminal, designed to handle 6,000 passengers an hour, is the biggest rail project since the Victorian era.

However, there are two problems with it. First, the British rail system does not yet have the track to handle the French-style high-speed trains that the terminal is designed to accommodate. On the British side of the Channel Tunnel, trains will have to slow down to well below 100 m.p.h.

Second, the new Waterloo addition may be redundant already. In a controversial decision, the government overruled British Rail management and decreed that St. Pancras Station will serve as the trans-Channel terminus.

So Waterloo International Terminal will spend at least its first year unused. British Rail will give no precise date on when services will begin. Even when that happens, the five platforms will see only infrequent use, perhaps only by excursion parties. Critics have suggested that the structure’s ultimate use may be for art exhibitions.

Commented Rail magazine: “Shortsightedness and muddling by politicians, civil servants and some sections of British Rail has cast a shadow over this inspirational building.”

The second ceremonial tape-cutting, by Prime Minister John Major, opened the six-lane Limehouse vehicular tunnel. Its 1.1 miles cost more than $500 million, making it the most expensive stretch of highway ever built in Britain.

The Limehouse link was designed to connect the out-of-the-way Canary Wharf Docklands office complex to streets closer to London’s financial district. Its opening completed the seven-mile Docklands Highway, which cost a further $520 million and is a core part of the London Docklands Development Corp.’s plan to regenerate a massive unused industrial district.

The problem is that the road system was based on projections for employment prospects in the Docklands that are proving to be overoptimistic. The Canary Wharf complex has come to grief: Acres of space remain unrented, and its owner, Toronto-based Olympia & York Co., is in bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the French have been right on schedule this week, opening their high-speed train link from Paris to Lille, which will soon be extended to the Channel. One observer commented: “In railway terms, the French network was like a replay of the Battle of Trafalgar--with the French winning.”

And French President Francois Mitterrand, in opening the new segment of the French high-speed system, couldn’t resist a needling remark: Passengers in 1994, he said, “will race at great pace across the plains of northern France, hurtle through the tunnel on a fast track--and then be able to daydream at very low speed, admiring the (English) landscape.”