The travel chaos seen around the main Channel ports of England since the end of last week has demonstrated how quickly the arterial link for tourism and trade between the Britain and the EU can clog up.
In the first big test for post-Brexit border checks, with thousands of families embarking on their summer holidays, the system failed; the port of Dover declared a “critical incident” last Friday as queues of cars and lorries backed up on to the roads of Kent. Chaos then spread to the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone.
Brexit has resulted in longer border formalities but does that mean this level of disruption is destined to become a perennial part of the British summer? Or can infrastructure, new technology and political goodwill permanently ease the Channel ports bottleneck?