“QUITE A LOT HAS BEEN GOING ON RECENTLY”

We have some fairly positive news to report this month, beginning with: RUNWAYS TO RAILWAYS : UNLOCKING THE GROWTH POTENTIAL OF THE CHANNEL TUNNEL Monday 31st March – 6pm to 8pm in London – The Campaign for Better Transport will be holding a panel discussion about how the UK can make better use of International Rail. See below to register for this free event. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/runways-to-railways-unlocking-the-growth-potential-of-the-channel-tunnel-tickets-1262329444349?aff=oddtdtcreator RESTORING INTERNATIONAL SERVICES FROM ASHFORD & EBBSFLEET A group of Kent & Sussex MPs have met with Eurostar urging them to carry out a proper assessment of consumer demand for train services serving these 2 stations in Kent. They also met with Virgin & the Rail Minister who confirmed they were both keen to see

AT LAST – SOME GOOD NEWS – PLANS BEGIN FOR MORE SPACE IN THE INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES AREA AT LONDON ST PANCRAS.

Late last year we heard that capacity for passengers departing from the station could be increased. HS1 announced that “a modest amount of new infrastructure would ‘unlock’ most of the constraints currently hampering growth” at St Pancras. Then, back in January HS1(The owners of St Pancras Station and the High-speed line to the Channel Tunnel) announced that they were recruiting a design team for this work. They have now re-named themselves as “London St Pancras Highspeed (LSPH)”. See here from the Architects Journal for further details about setting up the design team: –https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/competitions/competition-launched-for-st-pancras-reconfiguration Last week we heard that LSPH and Getlink (The owners of the Channel Tunnel) have made an agreement to facilitate the expansion of passenger traffic along HS1

EUROPE RETURNS TO THE UK IN 2025

This year the European Passenger Federation will hold their 22nd annual conference in Swindon at the Steam Museum, which is near to the rail station. This will be the first time they have held their conference in the UK since 2008. The town of Swindon has a rich rail history and is associated with Rail 200 – a range of events across the UK celebrating 200 years of the railways. The conference will take place on Friday 13th June and Saturday 14th June. European Rail campaign (UK) is a member of the European Passenger Federation, which means that members of our campaign are entitled to pay the reduced fee for the conference. See here for further details about the conference:

FIRST STEPS TOWARDS INCREASED CAPACITY AT LONDON ST PANCRAS INTERNATIONAL

Finally, “Active Thinking” have now published their initial report which suggests capacity at the over-crowded Eurostar Terminal could actually be increased by around 33% during the next 3-4 years. They also say that in the long-term, with a re-design of the terminal, capacity could be further doubled to cater for up to 5,000 passengers per hour. We now have to hope that the terminals at the other end of the line in Europe will also be able to cope with the extra passengers. For further details please see : https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/study-finds-international-passenger-capacity-at-london-st-pancras-could-be-doubled/68004.article AND THEN COULD THERE NOW BE SOME COMPETITION WITH EUROSTAR ? There was a very interesting session of “The House of Commons All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group on the 19th November.

FOUR PIECES OF GOOD NEWS

(1) ONE STEP TOWARDS MORE ROOM AT ST PANCRAS: HS1, the owners of St Pancras International station have signed a contract with “Active Thinking”(AT) to come up with recommendations for expanding the capacity of the station to cope with both more passengers and post Brexit passport controls. AT have a track record of similar work at airports, stations and the 2012 Olympics. It is expected that they will have a report ready this autumn. Click here for further information: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs1-ltd-commissions-study-to-expand-st-pancras-international-station-12-07-2024/ (2) RE-OPENING OF THE GOTTHARD BASE TUNNEL: Swiss Federal Railways have announced that the tunnel will fully re-open on 2nd September following the freight train de-railment that caused severe damage over a year ago. The one-hour reduction in journey times

BRUSSELS DECLARATION PUTS UK TRANSPORT POLICY TO SHAME

BRUSSELS DECLARATION PUTS UK TRANSPORT POLICY TO SHAME

On the 4th April 2024 all 27 EU Transport Ministers met in Brussels and issued a 20-point formal declaration outlining the most sustainable Transport Policy for the next European Parliament from 2024 to 2029. They are calling on the parliament to “Make rail transport the backbone of European mobility”. This is in stark contrast to the current UK Government’s complete lack of interest in expanding the capacity of our rail network. We can only hope that after the UK election in July, the new Government will have a more enlightened approach to rail. Even though the UK is not an EU member state, we have listed below 3 of the most important points which we believe could help our campaign:-

HAS GETLINK FINALLY “Got it” ?

Since the opening of the Channel Tunnel almost 30 years ago, Getlink (Formerly Eurotunnel) may have finally understood the need to make it easier to run more passenger trains through the tunnel. Evolyn, Heuro, Swiss Federal Railways and Virgin all announced last year tentative plans to launch new services via the tunnel. HS1 who own St Pancras International Station and the high-speed line to the tunnel have also stated that they want to increase their income from track access charges paid by train operators. Will this mean that some of the many barriers for new entrants to this market will finally be removed? Getlink plan to double the number of high-speed electric trains using the tunnel during the next 10

WITH 2 RECENT MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES, BOTH HS1 AND EUROSTAR NEED BETTER CONTINGENCY PLANS

At the end of the 2023 Xmas & New Year holiday period, the Eurostar service to and from London St Pancras was cancelled for the best part of a day. These incidents both occurred during the busiest time of year: – one just before the Xmas holiday and the other just before the New Year Holiday. Several thousand people were left stranded and had their holiday travel plans ruined. In both cases, we have to ask – are Eurostar maintaining their trains in a good condition and are HS1 looking after the infrastructure? We also have to ask them both why it took so long to get services back to normal and rescue passengers from a stranded train? One morning,

EURC(UK) – THE CAMPAIGN MOVES INTO IT’S FIFTH YEAR

We celebrated our 4th anniversary at our annual general meeting held in Birmingham on the 8th of December, noting a steadily growing membership. We were pleased to note that Eurostar were now running almost the same as the pre-covid service, even if this was not at pre-covid fares and still not serving Ashford and Ebbsfleet. Recently, there were more rumours in the press that, yet another European train operator wants to run a service to the UK via the channel tunnel – this time it was Swiss Federal Railways from Basel to London. Whether any of these 3 “plans” to compete against Eurostar see the light of day remains to be seen. What can we look forward to as we

CLIMATE CHANGE HITS 3 KEY EUROPEAN RAIL ARTERIES

At a time when we need to use our European Rail Network more than ever, 3 separate extreme weather events blocked 3 important rail routes during August and September. (1) On the 7th of August during “Storm Hans”, extreme rainfall and flooding caused the collapse of a bridge near Lillehammer on the main trunk line serving Northern Norway between Oslo and Trondheim. It will take a minimum of 3 months to restore any kind of service. There is only one alternative slower route with limited capacity. (2) On the 27th of August there was a very large rockfall near Modane which blocked the key Transalpine link between France and Italy. It is estimated that it will take a minimum of