Eurostar could face fresh rivalry on its cross-Channel train route. Just last month, new rail operator Evolyn announced plans to purchase a fleet of trains to serve the London to Paris line.
Now Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin Group, could also challenge Eurostar’s monopoly, UK newspaper The Telegraph reports. The project would see the British business magnate return to the UK rail sector. Virgin Trains stopped operating in 2019 after more than 22 years. The company’s former boss Phil Whittingham – until last year, MD of Avanti West Coast trains – is reportedly set to lead the new enterprise. Although the project is still in its early stages, it aims to serve routes from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, according to The Telegraph.
This article has been copied almost in its entirety from the original source, with no credit for the original author (Angela Symons). The only difference is that a few paragraph breaks have been removed. This seems to be a trend in the “Industry News” tab – large chunks of text which are copied wholesale and uncredited from other websites. It feels gross and scummy.
If you think somebody has written an interesting article elsewhere, post an excerpt with a link to the full piece, but don’t copy the whole thing here.
(I might be wrong, and you might have permission from all the different authors to reproduce their work – but if so, say so! Right now my RSS feed for LonRec is filled with what appears to be large-scale plagiarism, and it doesn’t make me feel good about reading or supporting the site.)
@Alex Chan
No attempt on our part to take credit for any of the Industry Posts, and the source article is always linked to at the end. Initially we only copied a few paragraphs, then over time started copying more and more over. I take full responsibility for this error, and shall return to posting a brief excerpt plus the link to the full article. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. LBM
Alex isn’t the only reader to feel uneasy about these posts. There have been several that have been almost reposted almost in their entirety, leaving out just a single paragraph at the end. Alex’s last sentence is spot-on for me too. Why are these being posted in this form, rather than as a link in the Friday/Monday reads digests?
OK. Going forward I shall only use a paragraph or 2 excerpt for Industry Posts. I have also removed most paragraphs from the most commented Industry Posts, to the same standard. LBM
Two more now making five total.
A new Dutch operator, Heuro, is considering launching trains connecting London, Amsterdam, and Paris, offering 15 daily return services between London and Amsterdam.
Yann Leriche, Chief Executive of Getlink, the company that owns Eurotunnel, has disclosed plans to introduce routes connecting London to destinations in Germany and Switzerland, potentially replacing flights.
The proposed routes would take approximately five to six hours and include cities such as Cologne and Frankfurt in Germany, as well as Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland.
I’m really supportive about having more services running alongside Eurostar but I’m really puzzled about where customs processing capacity/space will be found.
As a frequent Eurostar traveller (and based on the temporary closure of direct Amsterdam-London) service, it looks like customs processing is a very serious bottleneck to have more trains no matter what company runs them.
@SE1CycleMaster There is a “shed” on platform 15 that Eurostar services use for customs on the river-side of the station. You can see it on Google Maps as it isn’t undercover and stick out of the eastern end of the CentraalStation roof.
Passengers have to report there to be provided access to UK-bound trains.
@brian I meant customs capacity at London St Pancras (or elsewhere in London) and to a lesser extent at Continental stations.
The former seems to be at capacity already. Will the other operators use Waterloo, Stratford, or even Ebbsfleeet instead or would retail space and back of house space at St Pancras be allocated to onboarding facilities?
For the latter, it will be challenging if the operators (including Eurostar) want to have Schengen passengers board a Essen-Brussels-London train with a ticket to Brussels (and no requirement to go through customs) while passengers headed to London are processed.
They had the issue with the Lille stop on the Brussels to London service. I believe Eurostar just stopped selling Brussels-Lille ticket after someone challenged them that they should be allowed to do this without a passport.
Many questions arise with no ready answers. The momentum is that there is a building business case for an extension link to HS1. In the interim a modal shift from air has to be ‘proven’ and flexibility from the home office/INS. Electronic biometrics and pre-clearance visas will help smooth border measures. A future customs union is a possibility. French border officers already work on-train. Only the out-bound international platforms need be restricted. Once checked the domestic stops could be third-party rights domestic services.
International services would always have additional security and border staffing requirements.
Ashford could be used for de-boarding those requiring interviews and additional screening.
Stratford could terminate a few with reversal to the depot.
Ebbsfleet could be a ‘Shannon’- faster clearance of border controls with transfer to SEHS1 or onward local services.
@ SE1CM The Lille option could be dealt with by selecting the last car to serve it.
The remaining under-croft at St Pancras is the Met-TL interchange, taking out corridor retail does not significantly alter the possible processing area (as much as transforming the procedures).
The Waterloo option has closed but raises an interesting possibility. On a 3 hour journey UK slower running was a problem. On a 10 hour journey ( or even a sleeper ) maybe not so other platforms could be found especially overnight.
@Alek
There’s a load of underused space at the end of the platforms at St Pancras, upper ground level, around the ‘meeting point’ statue – a minor reconfiguration, including perhaps closure of some of the retail in the ground floor of St Pancras chambers, would release ample space for international arrivals, customs clearance etc, with a pleasant exit for arriving passengers onto the historic forecourt rather than into the crowded lower ground level concourse. This would vacate the significant undercroft space currently occupied by arrivals to be reconfigured for departures.
I worked on flow mapping at Eurostar for a while. Don’t expect any space to be released at St. Pancras in the medium term, as there is simply no way to configure it with access to the international platforms without a major re-engineering of St. Pancras’ internal volume. This leads to a Catch-22 where there’s insufficient incentive to invest in reworking the space while only one operator can just about squeak through with the available facilities, but no second operator is going to appear while the facilities are insufficient.
Reconfiguring arrivals to make more space for departures? Has already been done, it’s been in operation for 5 years now. Passengers are led crocodile-fashion from the main departures lounge across to Austerity Alley, from where they cannot leave until called for their train. Passengers hate it because there are basically no facilities, staff hate it because it annoys passengers and just imagine the challenge of corralling 100 of them for a moving post-security, post-frontier cordon. A permanent fixed link is impossible because it would block the east ticket hall entrance. IIRC there is some longer-term project in the works to rework all of the east side facility to better serve Eurostar, but I doubt that will include extra provision for other operators. Plus that was all being planned pre-pandemic when Eurostar was in a better financial position, who knows if they will still have access to the funding or even care as much, post the merger with Thalys.
And once you understand the space challenges, you get to the actual problem: The bottleneck that causes queues around the entire station is actually caused by… Police Aux Frontières. The flow mapping work I did showed that PAF accounts for well over 50% of queueing time. Eurostar has never been able to convince the French government to staff the PAF booths adequately, and this is not a Brexit thing as they’re inadequately staffed in Gare du Nord as well.
Add the extra delays caused by the UK’s own shonky e-gates on the exit check and you can understand why simply adding waiting space to the departures area will not increase St. Pancras’ suitability for a second operator. Peak queues will simply increase in length beyond the 1km they already stretch to on days like Good Friday, and even passengers arriving well in advance of the advised time will find themselves still queueing after their train departs. Eurostar soaks up these misses with whatever capacity it can release – what is a smaller operator with fewer tpd going to do?
My assumption is that any operator hoping to compete will be looking to other stations on or near the route. Presumably Ebbsfleet and/or Ashford has capacity at this point, but who on the continent is dying to travel to the middle of Kent then change onto expensive domestic high-speed rail? I don’t know whether the international facilities were ever actually built and mothballed at Stratford Int’l, or whether they were left off the plan once Eurostar made it clear there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of them stopping there, but that’s about the only realistic option I can see for a new operator.
In short, despite all the interest I don’t see all, or even a majority, of these putative new providers actually standing up a service. Between finding desirable station capacity in London, finding suitable stock (there are some VERY specific safety and operational requirements on stock that runs through the tunnel), and handling the logistics of transposed borders, there are considerable challenges for demand that hasn’t proven to exist yet. DB, with their experience of running high speed international rail, at least has a few trains of stock that meets the tunnel standards, yet hasn’t been able to make it happen. Having conversations with Alstom is several steps behind that level of readiness.
As to the idea of moving arrivals to the upper level and completely reconfiguring the undercroft, again that’s not possible due to the east ticket hall entrance. In strict terms this is an emergency exit and cannot be blocked or removed without significant changes to the station’s ability to be evacuated. In practical terms this would remove the most convenient exit for the taxi rank and interchange to King’s Cross. Moving arrivals upstairs is also a non-starter for Border Force reasons. They like arriving passengers to have a nice long controlled walk before departing the secure area because that’s when they’re watching the monitors deciding who to pull aside. To have that kind of distance upstairs would involve making the whole station frontage the secure area.
@James
I live meter meters away from Statford International so I’m be perfectly happy for “other” European services to start and end here.
Now that the station has been handed over to Southeastern, all the space for passport control has been vacated by the Network Rail office staff that used it for about a decade.
There are escalators to platforms 1 and 4 so the planned “£2m” cost of an ex-Mayor are probably about right.
The main problem is that you could start and end services on platforms 1 and 4, have the Eurostars pass though on the passing lines in the station and have the Javelins on 2 and 3 but the main problem would be how to turn around such services. The access ramp up to the Temple Mills Depot points the wrong way. It can be access to/from St Pancras.
As far as I can see you couldn’t start a service arrive on Platform 1 for “international arrivals” and then move it to platform 4 for “international departures” to segregate the two types of passenger.
The only way to do this would be to use the curved, sloping Temple Mills access ramp and block all four service directions for existing services whilst you did it (westbound into the tunnel, reverse up the ramp, stop and reverse down the ramp into the tunnel and then eastbound onto platform 4).
Given the only noise you ever hear from Statford International is the screeching noises from the access ramp, I’m going to venture the four-point-turns would be “operationally difficult” and block all four existing services.
Thanks @Alek and @James.
This is the sort of insight I love LondonReconnections for.
🙂
While not unexpected, this is quite discouraging regarding the prospects of more services taking advantage of Eurotunnel. I guess this leaves capacity for freight (which is no doubt with its own challenges).
This explains while Eurostar is looking for growth within the continent rather than across the Channel.
It just makes me wonder why so many operators make announcements about entering the cross-Channel bottleneck.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it was all Schengen?
*crawls into a corner sobbing*
@James “who on the continent is dying to travel to the middle of Kent then change onto expensive domestic high-speed rail?”
People looking for a cheaper train from more destinations, who would prefer smoother formalities at an efficient spacious Ashford Port, and HS2 who have a more lucrative opportunity with the international market than day trippers to Canterbury. The HS2 sets to StP are ‘cheaper’ to operate than the long Alstom sets. The ‘ticket’ would still be StP wherever with an Ashford transfer. HS2 pick-ups would better serve East London, South-East & Kent. Revenue share between HS2& ‘x’ operators would be transparent to travellers so no-one would be paying any expensive domestic fares. Eurostar sets the maximum market fare while they have any available seats. If it works X-Country could even return to Kent.
Future demand by Eurostar chief executive Gwendoline Cazenave
We have a bold vision to reach 30 million passengers by 2030, it carried 18.6 million passengers in 2023 a return to levels last seen in 2019. The year-on-year increases on Eurostar’s three main routes serving London St Pancras were Amsterdam (up 38%), Brussels (up 33%) and Paris (up 25%). Eurostar expects to carry nearly two million passengers to Paris during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.
@James @Alek @Brian
Seems to me that the forthcoming imposition of EES will make an already challenging situation at St Pancras untenable. Whilst I don’t doubt your experience in trying to address these issues @James, I also can’t accept that there’s nothing that can ever possibly be done, and neither will the political and commercial parties involved. Yes it will cost money. Yes it may involve moving fire exits, requisitioning retail space, re-thinking border force operations, possibly even having multiple departure or arrival areas for different trains/platforms/operators/destinations. But something will have to give sooner or later. As a wise man once said “everything is impossible until it happens”.
@Brian
Ebbsfleet has a crossover on HS1, South of the station, it’s visible on satellite images. Seems possible to me that Stratford might also have one inside the tunnel to the East?
Nevertheless, I’m inclined to agree that terminating trains at Ebbsfleet, Stratford or Ashford would be unattractive for prospective operators. There’s a reason Eurostar have mothballed them, and I’m not sure that the “OuiGo” model used at Marne-la-Vallée is going to work for cross-channel services needing security, border force etc. It seems unlikely to me that an operator would be able to make fares cheap enough to offset the less convenient station whilst still covering all those costs.
@Paul
“Seems possible to me that Stratford might also have one inside the tunnel to the East?”
My Joe Brown London Railway Atlas (2nd Ed) shows full crossovers to the east of Stratford Int’l, but not in tunnel.
@Paul indeed, as I said design was underway pre-pandemic on a major reworking of the whole facility. But that was before the company nearly went under during the pandemic, before the Thalys network was integrated meaning St Pancras is no longer the place every train ends up at some point, before management was moved to Brussels making St Pancras a problem that’s no longer right on the doorstep.
Yes, with enough will and cash St Pancras could be reshaped. I just don’t know whether both of those are in sufficient quantity.
@LBM
Looking at satellite images, I see a crossover at Stratford connected to platforms 2 and 3, the shorter domestic platforms, and not accessible to platforms 1 and 4. So it seems, as Brian says, that there’s no practical way to enable a regular service involving reversing international trains at Stratford.
@Paul For the purposes of trial services to test operations you could leave Stratford, pass Stratford International West Junction then reverse up the Temple Mills Depot line for servicing or stabling, if not required then back onto the down line. If not available you could run ECS to the North London incline and reverse there.
I foresee segregation by visa. UK/EU/US/ANZAC pre-cleared biometrics, and an out-of-town immigration border for others requiring interviews.
Monday’s Friday Reads
Channel Tunnel: Deutsche Bahn keen on trains to London
01/13/2024 January 13, 2024
“Transport between London and the mainland through the Eurotunnel remains of fundamental interest to Deutsche Bahn,” amid greater demand for climate-friendly transport.
The original plan was drawn up in 2013.
Last month Getlink said it aimed to double the number of high-speed rail services from London over the next 10 years with new services to Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Zurich.
I’m headed to Amsterdam with the direct Eurostar service this spring (just in time to avoid the temporary closures at Centraal on the way back).
I can’t wait too see how many other destinations I’ll be able to pick from next year! (*)
(*) not holding my breath considering all the above challenges.
The plot thickens as to where the ambitions of Eurostar and potential competitors will customs processing capacity.
🙁
“HS1 has now raised several concerns to MPs around St Pancras’ ability to accommodate the changes, predicting “unacceptable passenger delays”.
It pointed out that only 24 EES kiosks had been allocated by the French government, despite modelling suggesting that nearly 50 would be needed at peak times.
In evidence to the European scrutiny select committezwe, it wrote: “We are told that the proposed kiosks are ‘optional’ as the process can be delivered at the border, but without about 49 additional kiosks located before the current international zone [at St Pancras] there would be unacceptable passenger delays of many hours and potential capping of services.””
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/04/eurostar-st-pancrasmay-cap-services-post-brexit-passport-checks-warns-station-owner