Eurostar lifts 'cap' on passengers at St Pancras

[JaJaWa]

Eurostar running nearly full trains to Paris for first time since pandemic
Ross Lydall 10 October 2023

Eurostar has been able to run virtually full trains from London to the Continent for the first time since the pandemic after overcoming border control issues and staff shortages, it can be revealed.

The firm has been able to sell almost all 890 seats on its 16-carriage trains to Paris since last month after lifting a self-imposed “cap” on numbers that at one stage left 250 seats per train vacant.

This was because French border police – who are based inside St Pancras – and UK Border Force officials, who carry out customs checks, were unable to process enough passengers quickly enough to prevent huge numbers missing their train.

Demand for Eurostar tickets to France has soared in recent weeks due to the Rugby World Cup – up 30 to 40 per cent on pre-pandemic levels.

More than 18,000 passengers a day are using Eurostar services at St Pancras.

It comes as the firm, which has merged with European rail firm Thalys to increase its network to five countries including Germany, launched a marketing campaign aiming to position the Eurostar brand as “younger and more vibrant” to capitalise on the boom in leisure travel.

François Le Doze, chief commercial officer at Eurostar, said “less than one per cent” of seats were capped.

He told the Standard: “The cap has almost gone. We have made massive progress on this. We have done a really good job with the authorities - the Border Force and the French border police.”

Eurostar offers direct trains to and from St Pancras to Paris, Lille, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Under the expanded network, passengers can change at Brussels onto rebranded Eurostar trains to Cologne, and on to Dusseldorf and Dortmund. A total of 28 stations can now be reached on Eurostar.

The company’s aim is to develop a European presence beyond its cross-channel operations. “We have an extended network,” Mr Le Doze said. “We now cross five counties. We have a bigger playground. We have got more destinations.

“We see ourselves as the backbone of sustainable travel in Europe. Our objective is to connect with as many high-speed operators as possible.”

Mr Le Doze said direct trains between London and Germany were under consideration but unlikely in the short term.

“We are looking at direct routes in the future,” he said. “They are expensive to launch. They [take a long time] to launch because there are a lot of technicalities to get right. For the moment, we think the most efficient thing is to make a success of the connections that are there.”

Eurostar also hopes to avoid having to close its London to Amsterdam route for up to a year from next June.

The connection is at risk due to the rebuilding of Amsterdam Centraal station. But the firm is in talks with Dutch railway chiefs and hopes that the station’s closure can be delayed – and the reopening of the new station be brought forward.

Eurostar chief executive Gwendoline Cazenave has appointed Swiss experts to review the options to keep services running to Amsterdam, which has seen the biggest growth of all Eurostar routes – doubling since 2019.

“We are still working on a compromise, on a possible way we can keep this terminal open,” she said. Asked if there was likely to be a gap between the station closing and the new one opening, she said: “I hope not. The answer will be at the beginning of November.”

She said Eurostar had no immediate plans to have its trains call again at Ashford and Ebbsfleet stations in Kent, despite local demands, or at Calais.

“We will reopen this section once we can afford it,” she said. “We don’t want to put at stake the borders at St Pancras or Paris Nord, where the number of customers are much bigger.”

Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tra...-paris-kings-cross-gare-du-nord-b1112472.html

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The EU has pushed back roll-out of the ETIAS pre-authorisation for 3rd countries, seemingly by a year so will come in early 2025.
That will ease immediate fears of UK border congestion.
I'm not sure of the position on the other measure, which comes before ETIAS, the Entry-Exit system, but that looks like being delayed too,

 

[Gaelan]

Good news - hopefully this means a reduction in fares as well.

 

[BahrainLad]

“We have an extended network,” Mr Le Doze said. “We now cross five counties. We have a bigger playground. We have got more destinations.

This is complete nonsense. Pricing up London - Cologne on Eurostar.com just gives the price of London - Brussels and Brussels - Cologne on the same trains added together, whereas an "extended network" should offer a through fare.
Similarly, it's impossible to book London - Cologne on one ticket using Eurostar points. You have to book each train separately.
In this respect, nothing has changed since the merger. What have they been doing apart from sticking a logo on the trains, changing the uniform and devaluing everyones' points balances!?

 

[Gaelan]

This is complete nonsense. Pricing up London - Cologne on Eurostar.com just gives the price of London - Brussels and Brussels - Cologne on the same trains added together, whereas an "extended network" should offer a through fare.
Similarly, it's impossible to book London - Cologne on one ticket using Eurostar points. You have to book each train separately.
In this respect, nothing has changed since the merger. What have they been doing apart from sticking a logo on the trains, changing the uniform and devaluing everyones' points balances!?

Arguably, their network is smaller than it was a few years ago, when (as I understand it) they offered through fares from any UK station.

 

[Citybreak1]

This is complete nonsense. Pricing up London - Cologne on Eurostar.com just gives the price of London - Brussels and Brussels - Cologne on the same trains added together, whereas an "extended network" should offer a through fare.
Similarly, it's impossible to book London - Cologne on one ticket using Eurostar points. You have to book each train separately.
In this respect, nothing has changed since the merger. What have they been doing apart from sticking a logo on the trains, changing the uniform and devaluing everyones' points balances!?

Well said. Agree nothing has changed.

 

[S-Car-Go]

Indeed. You could purchase:
• Through fares from about 100 UK stations.
• Eurostar + reserved Thalys fares to the Netherlands and Germany.
• Eurostar + Any Dutch station.
• Eurostar + Any German station (with different fares according to distance).

And ticket offices that actually open, to purchase from knowledgeable staff.

 

[gravitystorm]

It's good news that they are now able to fill their trains - both from a customer point of view, and also to allow them to earn back some of the lost revenue.

The article only talks about passengers per train being close to 100% capacity, but does anyone know what the capacity per day is, compared to e.g. 2019? Are they yet back to running the same number of services that they used to?

 

[Teebs]

It's good news that they are now able to fill their trains - both from a customer point of view, and also to allow them to earn back some of the lost revenue.

The article only talks about passengers per train being close to 100% capacity, but does anyone know what the capacity per day is, compared to e.g. 2019? Are they yet back to running the same number of services that they used to?

Google suggests they ran 18 trains a day London to Paris in 2019 and a quick search on the Eurostar website for a booking next week looks like 17 a day at the moment.

Can't find any stats for Brussels trains in 2019, but the increase in Netherlands services might mean more of those?

 

[30907]

Google suggests they ran 18 trains a day London to Paris in 2019 and a quick search on the Eurostar website for a booking next week looks like 17 a day at the moment.

It seems to vary - ES habitually add trains midway through the booking period if things are looking healthy. I got 15 for next Tuesday!

Can't find any stats for Brussels trains in 2019, but the increase in Netherlands services might mean more of those?

The spread through the day has certainly altered, with maybe 1 fewer overall, but a rather more consistent timetable from week to week than on the Paris run.

 

[AdamWW]

It seems to vary - ES habitually add trains midway through the booking period if things are looking healthy. I got 15 for next Tuesday!

I presume that there's no public timetable any more then, and you just have to look at what's available to book on the day you might want to travel.

I wonder what's shown in the Thomas Cook timetable (as was).

 

[Gaelan]

I presume that there's no public timetable any more then, and you just have to look at what's available to book on the day you might want to travel.

That’s correct.

I’ve spent the past few days trying to reverse engineer a timetable from data they publish, and - maddening issues with the data quality itself aside - while there do appear to be trains that run more or less every day, there’s also significant week-to-week variation.

 

[30907]

I presume that there's no public timetable any more then, and you just have to look at what's available to book on the day you might want to travel.

I wonder what's shown in the Thomas Cook timetable (as was).

There is a core timetable but a fair number of Q paths. ES schedules on RTT are typically for 8-week periods, and they advertise and activate the Qs as necessary.

 

[Trainbike46]

I used to be able to find PDF timetables on the eurostar website, but they've gone for a while now. This explains it.

I do miss the pdf timetables, though it does make sense

 

[AdamWW]

I do miss the pdf timetables, though it does make sense

That's the way a lot of things seem to be going.

And while most people are probably happy with just looking up what's available on a given day, there are non enthusiast reasons for wanting to see timetables, e.g. if you're planning a holiday and don't have fixed dates it's useful not to have to pick a day and hope that the times you get are representative. And sometimes a glance at a timetable can tell you if what you want to do is practical or not whereas fiddling around with booking engines is more cumbersome.

 

[Gaelan]

There is a core timetable but a fair number of Q paths. ES schedules on RTT are typically for 8-week periods, and they advertise and activate the Qs as necessary.

Annoyingly the data on RTT is far clearer than the data they publish through other means, as (as you note) they do make use of the standard NR planning mechanisms - on the other hand, the data Eurostar themselves publish in GTFS format is a bizarre smattering of permanent schedules and GTFS' various override mechanisms with no apparent rhyme or reason. However, the NR data for some reason includes times for every station call, except Lille!

 

[cool110]

The EU has pushed back roll-out of the ETIAS pre-authorisation for 3rd countries, seemingly by a year so will come in early 2025.
That will ease immediate fears of UK border congestion.
I'm not sure of the position on the other measure, which comes before ETIAS, the Entry-Exit system, but that looks like being delayed too,

It's problems with getting the ESS ready that are the cause of the ETIAS delay. Furthermore this is actually making the border congestion worse as the French border guards have to enforce the 90 in 180 days rule by manually counting the dates on passport stamps, rather than having the ESS computer automatically do it.

 

[ainsworth74]

Furthermore this is actually making the border congestion worse as the French border guards have to enforce the 90 in 180 days rule by manually counting the dates on passport stamps

Are they actually doing that? I will confess I've not travelled that much so perhaps the lack of stamps hasn't been enough to raise questions in their minds but I've been to twice France this year and on neither occasion did they do anything other than flick through my passport to the next available blank page for the stamp.

 

[Peterthegreat]

Are they actually doing that? I will confess I've not travelled that much so perhaps the lack of stamps hasn't been enough to raise questions in their minds but I've been to twice France this year and on neither occasion did they do anything other than flick through my passport to the next available blank page for the stamp.

I have made several trips this year. At no point did the official do any manual checks.

 

[Stompehh]

I have had mine counted recently, and got held up because on one occasion I had an "entering France" stamp with no corresponding "leaving France" stamp (probably a lack of ink on the stamp at the time...)

 

[Class172]

I have had mine counted recently, and got held up because on one occasion I had an "entering France" stamp with no corresponding "leaving France" stamp (probably a lack of ink on the stamp at the time...)

It doesn't help that in my passport the stamps have not been accrued on consecutive pages; trying to count the corresponding in/out stamps would involve flicking forward and backward a lot between pages.

 

[Krokodil]

Are they actually doing that? I will confess I've not travelled that much so perhaps the lack of stamps hasn't been enough to raise questions in their minds but I've been to twice France this year and on neither occasion did they do anything other than flick through my passport to the next available blank page for the stamp.

My experience is similar, and I did some travelling out of Schengen last year (still mostly involving EU member states) so have acquired a few full pages of stamps. One border guard even put his stamp on a random page which would complicate things for anyone doing a proper check. They only ever glance while finding a free page.

 

[island]

Are they actually doing that? I will confess I've not travelled that much so perhaps the lack of stamps hasn't been enough to raise questions in their minds but I've been to twice France this year and on neither occasion did they do anything other than flick through my passport to the next available blank page for the stamp.

I've read a few online stories by people saying it happened to them, but I've never seen it occur myself. That said I'm usually in the EU queue where it wouldn't arise

 

[Brooke]

I commute weekly on E’star using a UK passport. My passport is virtually full with French but also many other countries stamps and visas.

I get scrutinised a bit by French officials, mostly because it is v hard for them to find the incoming stamp.

But I get scrutinised *a lot* by UK officials both at GdN and at UK airports.

It seems to me the UK computer assumes regular traveller = smuggler / trafficker, as the more I travel, the more they waste my time…

 

[Snow1964]

Google suggests they ran 18 trains a day London to Paris in 2019 and a quick search on the Eurostar website for a booking next week looks like 17 a day at the moment.

Can't find any stats for Brussels trains in 2019, but the increase in Netherlands services might mean more of those?

Found a timetable that someone photographed and posted on internet, summer 2000. London-Paris

Looks like upto 24 London-Paris trains (24 was Friday only, 21 on Mondays, 16 Tue -Thur, 20 Sat, 20 Sun

https://i.redd.it/rugi0m0ppgs41.jpg

www.reddit.com

Current 17 is well below the 24 trains on Fridays, 21 Mon, 20 Sat, 20 Sun, although one higher than midweek levels 23 years ago

 

[Teebs]

Found a timetable that someone photographed and posted on internet, summer 2000. London-Paris

Looks like upto 24 London-Paris trains (24 was Friday only, 21 on Mondays, 16 Tue -Thur, 20 Sat, 20 Sun

https://i.redd.it/rugi0m0ppgs41.jpg

www.reddit.com

Current 17 is well below the 24 trains on Fridays, 21 Mon, 20 Sat, 20 Sun, although one higher than midweek levels 23 years ago

Interesting, the day I looked at to check the number of services running now was a Thursday, looking at Friday this week and next week it seems like they have 18 scheduled tomorrow (London to Paris) and 17 next week. A pity they're not back to where they were.

 

[williamn]

Amazing how many trains Ashford used to have!

 

[popeter45]

Found a timetable that someone photographed and posted on internet, summer 2000. London-Paris

Looks like upto 24 London-Paris trains (24 was Friday only, 21 on Mondays, 16 Tue -Thur, 20 Sat, 20 Sun

https://i.redd.it/rugi0m0ppgs41.jpg

www.reddit.com

Current 17 is well below the 24 trains on Fridays, 21 Mon, 20 Sat, 20 Sun, although one higher than midweek levels 23 years ago

the E320s can carry about 30% more passengers per train so roughly on par with total capacity assuming most today are e320's instead of e300's

 

[AdamWW]

the E320s can carry about 30% more passengers per train so roughly on par with total capacity assuming most today are e320's instead of e300's

So it would be interesting to see timetables from more recently then with a mostly e320 fleet but pre-Covid.

 

[popeter45]

So it would be interesting to see timetables from more recently then with a mostly e320 fleet but pre-Covid.

https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/razeni.php?zeme=EIL&kategorie=ES&rok=2019 thou make sure you note some run some days but not others