Eurostar tickets now available from St. Pancras

[David]

Tickets for the first high-speed trains to leave the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras railway station in London are now being sold.
The switch from Waterloo to St Pancras in November will cut journey times to Europe by at least 20 minutes.

Business passengers will be able to reach the centres of Paris and Brussels before 0900 BST without travelling the night before.

Journeys from London to Paris will be cut from 2hr 35min to 2hr 15min.

Carbon targets

Richard Brown, Eurostar's chief executive said: "For the first time business travellers can arrive seamlessly in Paris and Brussels before 9am, ready for a full day's work.

"We'll be running more trains, with half-hourly departures to Paris and hourly departures to Brussels at peak times."

The company has also set itself the target of cutting CO2 emissions by 25% per passenger by 2012.

Eurostar trains will continue running into Waterloo until 13 November 2007.

The switch to St Pancras has allowed the use of a high-speed rail link as well as improved transport connections.

Nearly half of all the Eurostar services to Europe will call at Ebbsfleet International, Eurostar's new station near Dartford, Kent.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6913155.stm

More infomation at http://stpancras.eurostar.com/en-gb

 

[Crompton Karl]

Today our call centre at Rail Europe was contacted by Eurostar (Sister companies through SNCF Parentship) to help take the load off them as they expected a huge rush for tickets. According to my colleagues in this department it was rather quiet. Seems the rush didn't happen.

Karl

 

[Nick W]

I like the way they think that by shaving a small amount of time off the journey they'll suddenly attract a lot more people. They must face it: there's a lot of reasons why people might be attracted to train over aeroplane but eurostar is pretty much a slow ground-level plane between 2 city centre airports.

Now had they been selling cheap day returns from st pancras - ashford with a nice diesel locomotive to test on the inclines.

 

[coupwotcoup]

...I wonder if they have thought of running a few during the night? It's virtually impossible to get to Waterloo for the first train out to Paris by public transport, so why not try one in the middle of the night, say 3.30/4am?
Would greatly assist many people who wish to travel further afield, from Paris/Lille/Brussels..

 

[richa2002]

I like the way they think that by shaving a small amount of time off the journey they'll suddenly attract a lot more people. They must face it: there's a lot of reasons why people might be attracted to train over aeroplane but eurostar is pretty much a slow ground-level plane between 2 city centre airports.

How is the eurostar unlike other trains? If anything it's better than most trains.

 

[coupwotcoup]

I have to concur there... if I had the money, would move to Lille and commute to work every day. :-P