What better places to underline the turning wheels of history? “The Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie,” intoned the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, adding with just a touch of hyperbole: “In just a matter of years, rail passengers in the UK could be able to visit these iconic sights – direct from the comfort of a train.”
After a decade in which ministers sold off Britain’s share in Eurostar and left the company teetering on the brink, international rail travel is back on the government’s menu du jour. With Alexander announcing a bilateral agreement on rail with Germany last month, after a similar deal with Switzerland in May, long-lapsed ambitions for direct trains across the continent have revived.
Yet just as in the depths of the cold war, the fate of those vying to reach Checkpoint Charlie depends on the machinations of those working in the shadows in London; then MI6, now the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). The rail regulator is set to decide in the autumn how to allocate space in the solitary train depot that holds the key to a successful cross-Channel operation. A host of prospective rival companies want to move into the Temple Mills depot occupied by Eurostar, while the current operator also seeks room to run trains to Germany.
Nonetheless, rail historians will note that similar bold promises have been made before: in 2010 Deutsche Bahn announced plans for direct trains between Frankfurt and London, a scheme that disappeared into the sidings. Since then even existing offshoots – Disneyland, Avignon – have withered on the Eurostar vine. So what has given such confidence that rail travel through the tunnel can flourish at last?
The stars are aligning in a number of ways, according to Gareth Williams, the general secretary of Eurostar. After dicing with extinction during the coronavirus pandemic and post-Brexit border struggles, Eurostar is a bigger beast: merged with Thalys and targeting 30 million passengers a year, including on Franco-German routes that do not use the tunnel.
“Year on year, the growth we’re seeing is evidencing that we’re on track,” Williams says. “We’re looking to invest £1.5bn – and you’ve got other people who want to compete, all of whom are looking for financing for several hundred million. It’s not just us who are seeing the potential for growth in this market. Banks are prepared to back it.”
Helped by smartphones and personal entertainment, passengers are happier to spend longer journeys on trains, with the success of the London-Amsterdam route demonstrating that the old wisdom – that a train could only compete with planes for journeys of less than four hours – no longer applies.
Demand for green travel is genuinely starting to drive passenger choice, Williams says. “If you wind back, everyone always said: ‘Yeah, yeah, sustainability is a big factor for me’ – and it was never borne out in purchasing decisions. But increasingly that’s switching, and business is leading on that switch.”
Long-term technical and engineering problems are being finally resolved, potentially realising by 2030 the EU’s “Ten-T” vision, creating major international corridors for a trans-European transport network, a policy that dates back to the 1990s and which the current commission hopes to accelerate. Years of grind have harmonised some – if sadly not all – aspects such as signalling systems, power transmission and loading gauges (maximum sizes) that once halted trains at borders.
Williams hopes Eurostar’s next fleet will be fully interoperable across its network: “The trains used to have to negotiate seven different signalling systems … the first generation couldn’t go north of Brussels or the power would give out, Frankfurt required a different braking system. It’s really in the detail.” With some infrastructure problems eradicated, the train manufacturers Siemens and Alstom can design trains across the piste.
According to John Lawrence, the chair of the railway technical network of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, “the physical and technical barriers are less problematic than the political barriers and the practical matters of running a rail service – can you get a path, can you bludgeon a way through? And can we do it a speed that’s attractive?”
That gets harder with longer international routes, he says: “Where are you going to stable and maintain the trains? And house crews when things go wrong? How will you resolve clashes? It’s standard stuff – but it gets more complicated with wider stakeholder groups you have to encounter on the way.”
Part of the shifting landscape is liberalisation of rail in the EU, a policy pushed by the UK pre-Brexit, meaning other operators are already competing on French railways alongside TGVs run by the SNCF, the majority owner of Eurostar.
That includes Trenitalia, which runs Frecciarossa trains into the south of Paris and is among those looking to rival Eurostar through the tunnel. The Italian state company has signed a memorandum of understanding with Evolyn, a Spanish startup backed by the owners of the transport multinational Mobico, and could move existing trains quicker than new fleets could be delivered.
after newsletter promotion
Virgin and Uber are also looking to lend their brands to new cross-Channel operations. Sir Richard Branson’s venture is being set up in-house by the ex-boss of Avanti, while Uber is pairing with Gemini, a startup chaired by the rail freight and Channel tunnel veteran Lord Berkeley. Earlier this month Branson’s company signed a deal with Alstom for 12 high-speed trains it plans to use for journeys to mainland Europe by 2030 if it wins permission to run Channel tunnel services.
The changing financial calculations have prompted the operators’ clamour for a piece of the action, Berkeley says: “It’s partly Eurotunnel making some quite significant cost reductions, while HS1 [now renamed London St Pancras Highspeed] has been told to reduce their access charges. And the way that Eurostar fares have shot up has encouraged other people to look at it.”
The starting gun in the race – firmly a marathon rather than a sprint – was arguably fired by Getlink, the owners of Eurotunnel, whose chief executive, Yann Leriche, announced discounts for new routes or extra services in 2023. A similar deal has been offered by LSPH, for the British end of the tracks.
Not before time: a recently published report by the Steer consultancy, buried for two years in the Department for Transport, found that HS1 had been “poor value for money” and delivered far fewer international passengers than had been forecast when it opened in 2007.
Jim Steer, a long-term advocate for high-speed rail, says there are still “a lot of challenges to overcome”. But he adds the drive for more trains “is encouraging and real – it’s just happening a lot slower than anyone originally expected”.
Eurostar is targeting airlines’ big business flight corridors from London, Geneva and Frankfurt, after its latest success in becoming a market leader to Amsterdam. However, while the idea of year-round direct routes to the Mediterranean and beyond is tantalising, the geography and financials make changing trains in Paris the likely long-term reality. New entrants will focus on the lucrative London-Paris core, as Evolyn made clear; Gemini and Virgin hinted at wider plans but are so far only committing to Paris and Brussels.
Berkeley says Gemini’s “cheap and cheerful” model could make rail lower cost”. He adds: “Fares are much too high. Eurostar is a nationalised monopoly – we’ll have some good competitive spats, I’m sure.”
Eurostar says it welcomes the competition, as it prepares to finalise its own train order for 50 new trains, but wants the government to help provide more capacity. “Whatever the ORR turns around and says in October in relation to the Temple Mills depot – what about the other people who are wanting to invest, whether that’s us or Virgin, etc?” Williams says. “There’s a big opportunity for growth beyond that.”