The Channel Tunnel Study Group people, as it turned out late last year, are not alone in their ambitions for a physical connection between France and Britain. Last fall, when the French and British Governments decided—on British initiative—to negotiate with each other on a fixed connection between the two countries, it became clear that a dark horse had been entered in the Channel sweepstakes with the publicizing of the new proposal for a cross-Channel bridge made by a new French company that is headed by Jules Moch, a former French Minister of Interior. The bridge proposed by the new French company would be a multipurpose affair of steel capable of carrying not only two railroad lines but five lanes of motor traffic and even two bicycle tracks. It would extend between Dover and a point near Calais. Its width would be 115 feet and its height 230 feet, allowing (as the Tunnel Study Group's proposed bridge scheme would) ample clearance for the largest ocean liners afloat. Its length would be 21 miles; it would rest on 164 concrete piles 65 feet in diameter and sunk 660 feet apart. Motorists would travel along it, without any speed limit, at a peak rate of 5,000 vehicles an hour, and an average toll of about $22.50 per car. The bridge would take between four and six years to construct, and as for the cost, that would run to about $630,000,000—or $266,000,000 more than the estimated cost of a rail tunnel. Despite some backing that the new French bridge group appears to have established for its scheme among French commercial circles, the chances are that the British Government, as representatives of a maritime nation, will have a number of objections to this plan for spanning the Channel. A principal objection—a technical one that has confounded all the Channel bridge planners from Thomé de Gamond's day onward—is the hazard to navigation within the Strait of Dover that a bridge would create. The English Channel is one of the most heavily trafficked sea lanes in the world, and considering the violent state of wind and sea within the Strait of Dover for much of the year—as well as the heavy Channel fogs—insuring safe passage between the piers of such a bridge for all the thousands of ships that pass through the Strait every year, in all weathers, would pose formidable problems even in the era of radar. Also, the Channel-tunnel advocates, who already have considered a bridge and pretty much rejected the idea because of its high cost, point to other difficulties standing in the way of the bridge idea—for example, the requirements of international law, which would make necessary a special treaty signed by all countries (including Russia) presently sending ships through the Channel before such an obstruction to navigation could be constructed; the difficulties, with all the bad weather, of keeping such an enormous structure in good repair; and the dangers of Channel gales to light European cars traversing the bridge.