Frictionless trade*

Another version of the lorries circumnavigating the world in 2.5 days ( below)

In the event of a no-deal Brexit, French authorities have warned a two-minute delay at the border could lead to 27,000 vehicles queuing on both sides of the Channel.

That story follows a lorry driver through Calais at the moment: 

“I wanted to make it common knowledge how congested Calais already is. It runs smoothly, but sometimes you can wait up to nine hours,” said Wilkinson...“This is pure luck it only took an hour-and-a-half. A few hours later and it would be gridlock,” added Wilkinson, who runs a fleet of refrigerated lorries from Kent across the Channel every day, then brings food back.

So if I have the maths right, the nine hour delay experienced by this driver, with queues of 27k vehicles (if it is every) 2 minutes predicted by French authorities, means a queue of 7,290 km outside both Calais and Dover?  At ,say, 50 vehicles per km, that will be queues of 3,545,000 vehicles.

Interestingly, we learn that:

Between 6,000 and 10,000 trucks cross the Channel every day, and all checks – bar those of passports and for fraud and smuggling – are carried out on the French side because of limited space at the cliff-edged port of Dover.

And that:

But the best-laid plans could be undone by language issues, with knock-on delays as haulage is now dominated by Polish and Romanian-licensed lorries, with many drivers unable to speak French or English

 It all sounds pretty dysfunctional already,and in need of reform.

The first link points to another story from the Road Haulage Association:

Government plans for customs checks at Dover in a no-deal scenario are so impractical it would take eight hours to clear an average lorry carrying food and goods from Calais, the Road Haulage Association has warned...As it stands, each haulier entering Britain will be required to submit a 40-field declaration form per consignment before travel...“The form takes 10 minutes to fill out. If you take a large retailer who has 8,000 consignments [in one lorry], that would take 170 people eight hours to process one trailer,” said Richard Burnett, RHA chief executive...“That is the worst-case scenario. But even if you took the average trailer which has 400 consignments per delivery, that would take nine people eight hours to process.”

However, a local French politician is reported:

Bertrand said the French are so concerned about no-deal, they are going ahead with arrangements to keep traffic flowing in Calais...“It is very important to accelerate preparations at a national level. The lorries that will be stopped at the Franco-British border in Calais and elsewhere are not those just for the region but for the whole of Europe and companies that will be blocked from trading will be from the whole of Europe, so delays will affect all countries,” he said...Bertrand said there would be temporary border inspection posts for food controls in place for April and that recruitment had begun for the first batch of 250 customs officials...The region was also working on a “fastpass” virtual queuing system to counter stop-start congestion...“We need to tell companies locally in France and across Europe about changes that will take place at the border on customs and encourage companies to register the goods that they are trading as early as possible in the process rather than doing everything at the border ... We need to mobilise everybody to avoid that catastrophe,” he said.
A spokesman for HMRC said traders would submit customs declarations before transit to avoid delays...He said while no-deal would be a challenge, HMRC had “well developed plans” to ensure “functioning customs, VAT and excise system” in such a scenario.