<P> Tunnelling commenced in 1988, and the tunnel began operating in 1994 . In 1985 prices, the total construction cost was £ 4.65 billion (equivalent to £ 13 billion in 2015), an 80% cost overrun . At the peak of construction 15,000 people were employed with daily expenditure over £ 3 million . Ten workers, eight of them British, were killed during construction between 1987 and 1993, most in the first few months of boring . </P> <P> A two - inch (50 - mm) diameter pilot hole allowed the service tunnel to break through without ceremony on 30 October 1990 . On 1 December 1990, Englishman Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel with the media watching . Eurotunnel completed the tunnel on time, and it was officially opened, one year later than originally planned, by Queen Elizabeth II and the French president, François Mitterrand, in a ceremony held in Calais on 6 May 1994 . The Queen travelled through the tunnel to Calais on a Eurostar train, which stopped nose to nose with the train that carried President Mitterrand from Paris . Following the ceremony President Mitterrand and the Queen travelled on Le Shuttle to a similar ceremony in Folkestone . A full public service did not start for several months . </P> <P> The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now called High Speed 1, runs 69 miles (111 km) from St Pancras railway station in London to the tunnel portal at Folkestone in Kent . It cost £ 5.8 billion . On 16 September 2003 the prime minister, Tony Blair, opened the first section of High Speed 1, from Folkestone to north Kent . On 6 November 2007 the Queen officially opened High Speed 1 and St Pancras International station, replacing the original slower link to Waterloo International railway station . High Speed 1 trains travel at up to 300 km / h (186 mph), the journey from London to Paris taking 2 hours 15 minutes, to Brussels 1 hour 51 minutes . </P> <P> In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers elected the tunnel as one of the seven modern Wonders of the World . In 1995, the American magazine Popular Mechanics published the results . </P>

When did the channel tunnel rail link open