...DB has stated that they will introduce direct services from London to Koln and Frankfurt, but teh dates have slipped - I am not sure what the current target dates are at the moment.....
When DB announced its plans to operate to London and brought the ICE 3 to St. Pancras in 2010, they were hoping for a 2012/13 start date. They even muted that they might be able to start in time for the 2012 Olympic Games; which seemed a tad ambitious as the new trains they intended to use (Velaro D) hadn't even been built at the time.
Later on that proposed start date was put back to 2015, but with the ongoing problems with introducing the new trains into service, DB subsequently put the date back again to late 2016 at the earliest.
In February this year, DB officially announced an
indefinite delay and that they were
reconsidering whether to continue with the plan at all, citing "
a change in the market" and "
None of us anticipated that we would have such major problems with certification. In the meantime, the business environment has changed.".
Eurostars announcement of its plans to start an Amsterdam service has also scuppered DB's own business case.
It is thought that if a DB Frankfurt service eventually goes ahead, it won't be until the
end of this decade at the very earliest (2020+).
At the Eurostar e320 event at St. Pancras last week, Eurostar said that the Koln/Franfurt service would be a connection from Eurostar to DB at Brussels, rather than through services.
Another aspect is that the operational costs of high speed rail and the competition from low-cost airlines makes it difficult to build business cases except for connections between large conurbations.
Off topic, but on the subject of competition from low cost airlines.
It has irked me somewhat to see that competition from low cost airlines is generally cited as one of the reasons why the Regional Eurostar services didn't go ahead, back in the late 1990's.
While the other economic arguments that killed of that plan were totally valid, it's the repeating of this particular aspect that's become a constant source of irritation for me. If I may just get it off my chest, I'd like to see an end to this myth (or lie?) being perpetuated.
Facts....
The scale of the low cost airlines was still quite small until the early 2000's, when they're growth rates exploded. This was long after the ill fated Reg. E* had been canned.
For the Reg E* services that were proposed, there were no low cost operators flying from the regional departure points to those respective European cities. Only so called "full fare" operators.
Low cost flights from Manchester and Leeds to Paris have only been operating in the last 5 or 6 years; the Leeds service can only muster 4 flights a week.
These flights started 10 years or more after the cancellation of Reg. E*.
Manchester is the biggest market, but is predominately flown by the full fare operators.
There have never been low cost flights between Manchester or Leeds to Brussels, Cologne or Frankfurt, only full fare operators on these routes.
In fact Leeds has not had any flights to theses cities for long periods of time over the last 2 decades.
There have never been low cost flights from Birmingham to Paris, Brussels, Cologne or Frankfurt, despite the regular full fare operations.
Birmingham to Amsterdam low cost flights have been on and off over the years and really haven't taken a foothold against KLM's service.
Incidentally, low cost airline operations have not really prospered on the London to Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt markets either, despite being very busy air routes.
OK now I've got that off my chest, back to the topic........
3 weeks in service and now being scrapped