Why did Eurostar move from Waterloo to St Pancras?

[MotCO]

Yes I know that it changed as a result of the completion of HS1, but surely HS1 could have arrived at Waterloo. There was a purpose built terminal at Waterloo, so why go to the expense of building another terminal? The land may not have been available to build a surface railway, but presumably it could still have gone through Essex, and then turned south underground towards Waterloo. Or was it because of better connections with the north, but the North of London concept never materialised?

So why did they change the terminals?

 

[Agent_Squash]

Michael Heseltine wanting to regenerate North London was one of the factors iirc.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Snobbery about being South of the river. Taxi drivers would suck their teeth and overcharge unsuspecting French tourists as a result...

 

[nuts & bolts]

Snobbery about being South of the river. Taxi drivers would suck their teeth and overcharge unsuspecting French tourists as a result...

It was only just 'sarf of the river' mate

 

[Clip]

It was only just 'sarf of the river' mate

South is South

Waterloo isnt that well connected like St Pancakes is

 

[wellhouse]

Just glance at tube and national rail maps.

Far, far more connectivity locally, regionally, and nationally at St Pancras

 

[Taunton]

Eurostar lost quite a lot of their business traffic to Paris and Brussels back to the airlines from Heathrow as a result. These regular passengers are quite concentrated in the SW outer suburbs and country, in no small part because of convenience to Heathrow when travelling elsewhere, and found the local trip to Waterloo was fine, but the multiple changes to get to St Pancras tipped the balance.

The North connectivity has always been overblown, in my view, and certainly for those French/Belgians/other Europeans/USA visitors etc who are inbound, very few are travelling beyond London. I'm always surprised how many Americans are in Eurostar.

I believe that Eurostar modelled the additional traffic generated by reducing transfer times for those coming from the North, but quite forgot to assess the traffic loss they would get in the reverse direction.

I once spoke to the manager of the M&S on Waterloo concourse in Eurostar days, who said they had a notable rush on Sunday evenings with people returning from a weekend in Paris, and doing their grocery shopping while waiting for their suburban train home.

 

[adamedwards]

Part of the plan was to keep the Waterloo station with services to both. But Eurostar never achieved the passenger numbers expected to justify the duplication.

 

[KingJ]

For the most detail, you might want to hunt down a copy of BR's report on the different routes: "Rail Link Project: Comparison of Routes". A copy is available at the British Library as well as some other University libraries.

Otherwise, this case study on the CTRL will probably be of use too. Skip to page 79, "Route Options and Appraisal (1987-1993)". This includes content from BR's 1991 report as well as many others.

 

[Bald Rick]

Eurostar lost quite a lot of their business traffic to Paris and Brussels back to the airlines from Heathrow as a result. These regular passengers are quite concentrated in the SW outer suburbs and country, in no small part because of convenience to Heathrow when travelling elsewhere, and found the local trip to Waterloo was fine, but the multiple changes to get to St Pancras tipped the balance.

The North connectivity has always been overblown, in my view, and certainly for those French/Belgians/other Europeans/USA visitors etc who are inbound, very few are travelling beyond London. I'm always surprised how many Americans are in Eurostar.

I believe that Eurostar modelled the additional traffic generated by reducing transfer times for those coming from the North, but quite forgot to assess the traffic loss they would get in the reverse direction.

I’m afraid this isn’t correct.

Following the move, Eurostar did pre / post move comparisons of traffic from every region of the U.K. down to county level (at least, it may have been by district or post code, I can’t remember for sure).

Post the move, almost every single area showed an increase in traffic, some significantly so. The two that didn’t, predictably, were Surrey and Hampshire, and IIRC one of these had no change and the other a single digit percentage loss. Basically negligible in the big picture.

It’s also quite incorrect to say that business travellers to Paris /Brussels who would use Eurostar were concentrated in the SW (presuming you mea the SWML area); that just wasn’t the case.


As for the original question - The Eurostar terminus was always intended to be in the Kings Cross / St Pancras area on completion of the high speed line. Initial proposals saw it approaching by deep tunnel from somewhere near Orpington, to a new sub-surface station roughly in the triangle between KX / St Pancras. Waterloo was always intended to be temporary, albeit with the ability to be more permanent if the high speed line took a while to build.

There’s a good article on this on ‘Londonist’
https://londonist.com/london/transport/kings-cross-station-eurostar-st-pancras

 

[swt_passenger]

Living in Hampshire and previously using the Waterloo to HS1 route, I never once thought moving to St Pancras was a significant issue, the slight increase in time for the tube transfer is more than compensated for by the reduced St Pancras to Paris timings.

I suggest many people saw it as a perfectly reasonable decision for the greater good...

 

[Taunton]

My comments on reverting to Heathrow come from British Airways comments when they increased their service after the change, plus direct experiences of business contacts.

And from our house in Canary Wharf (NORTH of the river!) I find it a significant extra trek to St P compared to Waterloo. In fact, we now drive by the A13 and Dartford Bridge to Ebbsfleet, and park there instead.

I believe probably a key issue was that with HS1, although Waterloo would have been fine for Eurostar, there was no space for the HS1 domestic services.

There were a lot of unfulfilled promises made by Eurostar to get the new terminal approved. Yes they were going to keep both termini going (abandoned). Yes they were going to stop at Stratford (abandoned). Yes they will stop at Ebbsfleet (hardly any service left, last Paris train of the day at 12.45).

I actually believe that Eurotunnel nowadays find Eurostar a nuisance, and would like to be shot of them and concentrate on their own shuttle operations. The service nowadays, particularly to Brussels, is little different to its first years, and certainly never capitalised on the HS1 reduction in journey time.

 

[RT4038]

My comments on reverting to Heathrow come from British Airways comments when they increased their service after the change, plus direct experiences of business contacts.

And from our house in Canary Wharf (NORTH of the river!) I find it a significant extra trek to St P compared to Waterloo. In fact, we now drive by the A13 and Dartford Bridge to Ebbsfleet, and park there instead.

I believe probably a key issue was that with HS1, although Waterloo would have been fine for Eurostar, there was no space for the HS1 domestic services.

There were a lot of unfulfilled promises made by Eurostar to get the new terminal approved. Yes they were going to keep both termini going (abandoned). Yes they were going to stop at Stratford (abandoned). Yes they will stop at Ebbsfleet (hardly any service left, last Paris train of the day at 12.45).

I actually believe that Eurotunnel nowadays find Eurostar a nuisance, and would like to be shot of them and concentrate on their own shuttle operations. The service nowadays, particularly to Brussels, is little different to its first years, and certainly never capitalised on the HS1 reduction in journey time.

Well I live north of London, and am really glad that Eurostar moved to St. Pancras. And I'm really glad the trains don't stop at Stratford International, and only a few stop at Ebbsfleet and Ashford, as this increases journey time to pick up small numbers of passengers. It would be quite ridiculous (on the basis of current frequency of service) to run from two different London terminals. The money was only available for one HS1 routing, and I think the best choice was made. Realise that Surrey and Hampshire passengers lost out - they are nearest Heathrow are are most likely to transfer to plane - but you can't have everything.
Not sure what is meant by Eurostar never capitalising on the HS1 reduction in journey time - loadings to Brussels have never been good ( I have been on many poorly loaded Brussels services). However the Amsterdam extension is trying to address this. The HS1 reduction in journey time has enabled the original timetables on both routes to be maintained (and slightly increased on the Paris line), otherwise cuts would have been necessary with the slower train pre-HS1 loading patterns.
I am sure you are right that Eurotunnel would rather have the tunnel exclusively for own operations - why wouldn't they? Although Eurostar provides them with some revenue, this comes at a price. However, they are forced to accept them, but any material frequency increase would likely be quite difficult and much fought over. Hence Eurostar buying larger capacity trains, rather than running more frequent service.

 

[Ianno87]

There were a lot of unfulfilled promises made by Eurostar to get the new terminal approved. Yes they were going to keep both termini going (abandoned). Yes they were going to stop at Stratford (abandoned). Yes they will stop at Ebbsfleet (hardly any service left, last Paris train of the day at 12.45).
.

That has been the service at Ebbsfleet for a long time, possibly since opening. Presumably means that check-in/security can be staffed in a single shift, and puts passengers on trains earlier in day when later trains from London are naturally fuller.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Basically, what had happened was the demand modelling they used in the 1980s, which was really one of the first of its time said the passenger numbers would reach 25-30 million by the end of the 1990s. Hence the enormously long trains that were ordered for Eurostar. In reality, the passenger numbers were less than half of that, maybe just a quarter (without looking at my books). Anyway, British Rail by the end of the 1980s realised that Waterloo couldn't cope with 30 million Eurostar passengers a year, so they looked at building a new terminal. White City, Stratford and Kings Cross were the contenders, with a large combined underground Thameslink/Eurostar station built at Kings Cross-Kings Cross Low Level. The project became a pet of BR, who even started the legal procedures to build the station.

The original route for HS1 was the run the line I think to Swanley or Sidcup, then run under Hither Green, Brockley, the Old Kent Road and the City in a tunnel up to Kings Cross. Waterloo was going to be kept, as I understand it, with a spur that would have branched off the mainline somewhere underneath Brockley and joined the Catford Loop at an area called Warwick Gardens in Peckham. This would have served Waterloo bound Eurostars and Network SouthEast's "Kent Express" Networkers-now known as South Eastern Javelin services. Although I have also seen that NSE trains would have terminated at City Thameslink.

Anyway, by the early/mid 1990s they realised they wouldn't need two termini, so Waterloo was going to be closed. Hence why the Eurostar runs round London to approach it in the wrong direction. It made perfect sense in the 80s when Waterloo was still going to be open.

 

[mwmbwls]

It was tedious dawdle from Fawkham Junction to Waterloo with considerable knock on risks of delay imported from the Southern electric network. Waterloo was also peripheral to the majority of other London terminal stations being off the Circle Line. St Pancras had within walking distance links with Kings Cross and Euston. The presence of the North London Line from Stratford to just north of Kings Cross minimised the land ownership issues relating to TBM tunnelling (although unforeseen sand lenses near Dalston were discovered later). St Pancras was a listed asset and severely underused - the use of the station as the Eurotunnel service was seen as a win-win-win situation and certainly the inspired rebuild utilising the beer barrel vaults has been an outstanding success. Was this all planned and foreseen - I think that in retrospect it falls into the category of "it seemed like a good idea at the time" and it was. Of Ken Livingstone's work supporting an Olympic Games was an idea in the same category - it did not quite work and Stratford International is an international failure.

 

[KingJ]

And I'm really glad the trains don't stop at Stratford International, and only a few stop at Ebbsfleet and Ashford, as this increases journey time to pick up small numbers of passengers

At Ashford the numbers are somewhat more than you might imagine. Certainly not enough for an entire train, but not an insignificant amount either - last time I went from Ashford in 2018 the departure lounge was pretty full. This was/is also at a time when Ashford was not receiving a full service due to the signalling issues which i'm sure would have dissuaded some.

I'd love to see some hard stats though - I had a quick look but couldn't find a per-station breakdown of Eurostar passenger numbers.

 

[Class 170101]

The other thing to note with the 'closure' of Waterloo International is that it has now, finally, been subsumed into London Waterloo (Domestic) and extra capacity has been provided for south western services, not possible without International services moving to St Pancras.

 

[Bungle965]

What we are now finding is that St Pancras is becoming too small to handle the ever increasing numbers of Eurostar passengers.
Sam

 

[Busaholic]

It got very boring waiting on West Dulwich station for the half hourly (even in peaks) stopping service from Orpington to Victoria while the Eurostar trains joined the Kent coast services and whizzed through. It was only with the removal of Eurostar that the giddy heights of a 15 minute interval service were attained. So good riddance.

 

[infobleep]

The other thing to note with the 'closure' of Waterloo International is that it has now, finally, been subsumed into London Waterloo (Domestic) and extra capacity has been provided for south western services, not possible without International services moving to St Pancras.

It took far too long, in my opinion, for it to be subsumed into the domestic part of London Waterloo.

On a purely selfish note I would love Eurostar trains to depart from Waterloo as getting to St Pancreas International isn't straight forward as if you go by the tube you have to change or walk from Euston. Of course I accept it can't be run just for my benefit. Sometimes I do wish Waterloo had, had a through line north, like London Bridge does. I do appreciate that if trains still went from Waterloo then people from the north would have the issues of getting to Britain's busiest terminal.

Incidentally I just looked up on TfL journey planner for 7am tomorrow and they suggested Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus and then the Victoria line. It takes 12 minutes.

If you want step free access then they suggest Jubliee line to Green Park and then the Piccadilly line. That takes 33 minutes.

The bus is 42 minutes and walking 50 minutes.

Is their any reason why they don't suggest going to London Bridge on the train and then a train through the core?

For reference I entered in Waterloo to St Pancras and it suggested the station King's Cross St Pancras.

 

[Class 170101]

What we are now finding is that St Pancras is becoming too small to handle the ever increasing numbers of Eurostar passengers.
Sam

Might not be a problem post Brexit - if it happens.

 

[trebor79]

Is their any reason why they don't suggest going to London Bridge on the train and then a train through the core?

For reference I entered in Waterloo to St Pancras and it suggested the station King's Cross St Pancras.

Because tfl pretend Thameslink doesn't exist. Something to do with revenue loss I believe, they want you to use the tube rather than the "competition".

 

[infobleep]

Because tfl pretend Thameslink doesn't exist. Something to do with revenue loss I believe, they want you to use the tube rather than the "competition".

And there was me thinking it might be due to connection times at Waterloo, Waterloo East and London Bridge being longer than the ones on the underground (even if in practical terms it isn't longer).

Interestingly looking it up on National Rail Enquiries App, they suggest Waterloo to London St Pancras International with no changes at 21 minutes. Actually you do change but they don't count tube changes as changes.

Alternatively they suggest the following two:
Waterloo to Vauxhall by train and then tube to London St Pancras International.
Waterloo to London Blackfairs, with no suggest of how to get between the two and then train to London St Pancras International.

Those both take 29 minutes. At no point do they suggest going via Waterloo East and London Bridge. If you put in via London Waterloo East, it actually allows 36 minutes. So going that way is actually rather slow compared to the alternatives.

 

[Bald Rick]

And there was me thinking it might be due to connection times at Waterloo, Waterloo East and London Bridge being longer than the ones on the underground (even if in practical terms it isn't longer).

Interestingly looking it up on National Rail Enquiries App, they suggest Waterloo to London St Pancras International with no changes at 21 minutes. Actually you do change but they don't count tube changes as changes.

Alternatively they suggest the following two:
Waterloo to Vauxhall by train and then tube to London St Pancras International.
Waterloo to London Blackfairs, with no suggest of how to get between the two and then train to London St Pancras International.

Those both take 29 minutes. At no point do they suggest going via Waterloo East and London Bridge. If you put in via London Waterloo East, it actually allows 36 minutes. So going that way is actually rather slow compared to the alternatives.

It’s quicker to walk Waterloo to Blackfriars (15 mins), than walk Waterloo - Waterloo East (4 mins), wait for a train (say 2 mins) travel to London Bridge (4 minutes), change (say 4 mins including wait for next TL train), and back to Blackfriars (6 mins) - Total 21 mins, and that’s being optimistic about wait times.

 

[ashkeba]

It’s quicker to walk Waterloo to Blackfriars (15 mins), than walk Waterloo - Waterloo East (4 mins), wait for a train (say 2 mins) travel to London Bridge (4 minutes), change (say 4 mins including wait for next TL train), and back to Blackfriars (6 mins) - Total 21 mins, and that’s being optimistic about wait times.

And Waterloo and Blackfriars are almost either end of Stamford Street. If people need to be told how to get between them, the UK is doomed.

 

[milkinc13]

I heard it was because the French didn't like the reminder of another lost battle when they got off the train

 

[mwmbwls]

One added benefit of the move was the utilisation of spare capacity on HS1 to run the Javelin services to East Kent. Prior to that Ramsgate and Margate were remote. Sadly the vision did not extend to linking up to Hastings - but the light is now dawning there too. The dropping of this capacity enhancing penny also explains why the coexistence of NPR and HST2 will be a good idea.

 

[30907]

That has been the service at Ebbsfleet for a long time, possibly since opening. Presumably means that check-in/security can be staffed in a single shift, and puts passengers on trains earlier in day when later trains from London are naturally fuller.

And presumably reflects the situation that Ebbsfleet users are more likely to be UK residents (and their guests?) from the catchment area/via the M25 than tourists/business people heading for said area? So morning out/evening back makes sense.

 

[hwl]

And there was me thinking it might be due to connection times at Waterloo, Waterloo East and London Bridge being longer than the ones on the underground (even if in practical terms it isn't longer).

Interestingly looking it up on National Rail Enquiries App, they suggest Waterloo to London St Pancras International with no changes at 21 minutes. Actually you do change but they don't count tube changes as changes.

Alternatively they suggest the following two:
Waterloo to Vauxhall by train and then tube to London St Pancras International.
Waterloo to London Blackfairs, with no suggest of how to get between the two and then train to London St Pancras International.

Those both take 29 minutes. At no point do they suggest going via Waterloo East and London Bridge. If you put in via London Waterloo East, it actually allows 36 minutes. So going that way is actually rather slow compared to the alternatives.

I've done it in substantially less but wasn't keeping a good eye on the watch, plenty of generous allowance in there (sensible for luggage).

National Rail Journey Planner also suggests walking to Blackfriars as a option!
Are some of the London Bridge rebuild and TL service ramp up discouragements from interchanging at LBG still in place? (Accidentally?)

TfL are pretty scared about revenue loss (given tasty Z1 fares of putting Thameslink on the map (again).
There are 2 potential issue that could force this:
a) Bank Station blockade - the only option is to encourage some passengers on to Thameslink
b) If the Bank branch is still rammed afterwards (London Bridge - Moorgate is one of the am peak northbound overloaded sections) then the cheapest alternative (if no new trains) is to put Thameslink on the map.

but if big revenue loss is seen anyway on Jubilee from West Hampstead - Canary Wharf with staying on TL to Farringdon and CR from there by the regular commuters then the overall cost of putting it on the map is then far less but we don't find that out in practice till CR opens and users start experimenting.

A DfT funding agreement may also force the issue (if DfT have some sense) with TfL looking for roads funding (inc. Hammersmith Bridge).