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Thursday December 24 2009

Categories: RAILBlog

As the dust settles (although sadly not for its appallingly-treated passengers) on the Eurostar/Eurotunnel debacle, a few random thoughts.

Yesterday afternoon, I boarded an East Coast train at King’s Cross having walked past the mother of all queues for the limited Eurostar service running again from St Pancras International, next door. Today, it’s almost back to normal, but there are still large queues.

For those who know the geography, the queue on December 23 emerged from the main Eurostar side entrance on the eastern flank, and ran (three or four deep) all the way down Pancras Road, round the corner into Euston Road and nearly to the main hotel door on the station front, just short of the British library. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, once the frozen souls entered the Hogwartian main oak doors, the queue then snaked back and forth between barriers in the large concourse by the check-in gateline.

As I walked past the shivering crowds a clearly weary (but rather brave) Eurostar lady was yelling: “At this point in the queue, there will be a seven hour wait, and there’s no guarantee of getting a train. It’s up to you whether you stay or not. It’s your choice.”

Mmm. Nice. Queue for three times longer than the journey to Paris. I bet that made them all feel valued.

Stepping right back from this there are two quite separate world class cock-ups here. First of all, the snow filtration problem on the trains (the breakdown) and the utterly appalling, slow, detached and cack-handed response to the crisis.

Eurotunnel, which failed miserably in the basic reaction of getting the trains out quickly, shamefully then kept its head below the parapet while Eurostar took the full force of the political, passenger media and passenger fury. And the PR response overall was as inept as the response plan had been inadequate.

For an organisation as slick as Eurostar, it was if they couldn’t find their backsides with both hands. Whoever advised Richard Brown to post this on youtube, for example, is in the wrong job and as for whatever possessed Richard to agree to do it….well, it beggars belief. It just looks awful.

I thought it looked like it was shot in a room cupboard. One wag here in the office added “For pity’s sake, it looks like a hostage video….”

I spent all day Sunday and Monday doing media interviews, for all the TVs and radio stations you’ve heard of and quite a few that you haven’t. I wrote for the Times on the Monday. Yet I got not a single call from either Eurostar or Eurotunnel - and their failure to appreciate what was happening to them was reflected in the crass stupidity of a comment made by Eurotunnel to RAIL Business Editor Phil Haigh.

“This wasn’t an emergency,” he was told sniffily, “It was a technical failure.”

Oh, really? The lady who offered this moronic reaction should have tried offering it to the tens of thousands of passengers who were left, literally, hanging about wondering what to do. Or who had been in state of panic trapped beneath the channel, struggling to breathe, in the darkness.  Watching Eurostar and Eurotunnel was like watching a headless chicken and a rabbit in the headlights. It was Dad’s Army-esque, with Corporal Jones running round in circles yelling: ‘Don’t panic!” 

If I’d been CEO of either company and the TV was carrying frequent interviews by two well-known railway journalists offering critical opinions you can bet I’d want to brief them and at least try and shape the opinions they were offering by offering some information or insight. But not a peep…well, it was only a ‘technical failore’ after all, not a real emergency!

The media, of course, lost interest the second that it was announced a partial service would be running on Tuesday morning and the tripod troops at SPI instantly packed up its tents and moved on.

I talked to independent inquiry Christopher Garnett yesterday and hope that his investigation gets to the bottom of the real problems. I am deeply saddened, as well as really angry, that Eurostar seem to be in a state of denial and every statement blames somebody or something else. There’s much talk of ‘extreme weather’ and a ‘new problem’ both of which produce snorts of derision from engineers and others who understand the weather conditions on the one hand and the Eurostar snow filtration system on the other.

Just one of the questions we’ll be digging into is this: if a previously unencountered type of French snow, which on the one had is ‘very dry’ whilst being simultaneously ‘fluffy’ (wet!) is the problem, why has it not decimated the French TGV fleet, which has exactly the same kind of snow filtration? As indeed do the Thalys trains, by the way. And that’s not surprising – the Eurostar is, after all, a TGV beneath the skin.

And let’s not be duped by the ‘condensation’ red herring either – that’s a problem with every train entering the tunnel, and for which the design takes full account. Finally, these failures are not a new problem either – there was a very similar incident in 2003. Look at the BBC news website for February 1 2003 and check out why Eurostar said the breakdown happened. 'Unprecedented" eh?

Eurostar, I’m sad and sorry to have to conclude, is seemingly guilty of being not only being vague and contradictory, but disingenuous too.  And that seems to be putting it politely.

We’ll be covering the aftermath, and digging deeper into the causes, in the next RAIL so don’t miss joining us in the new year.

Since the first Channel Tunnel fire in 1996, I have reported, and done extensive TV commentary on the disasters at Southall (1997), Ladbroke Grove (1999), Hatfield (2000), Great Heck (2001), Potters Bar (2002), Ufton Nervet (2004) and Lambrigg (2007). But this is the first time I have received multiple emails from readers who are simultaneously appalled at the miserable and cack-handed PR response to the accident but who, more seriously, simply don’t believe Eurostar's story. Now that IS unprecedented.

And you know what? For the first time, I too remain far from convinced by the story being offered. I have never come across this, or felt like this, before. It s a most unpleasant feeling. Is Eurostar knowingly not being straight - or is it in denial? You can rest assured that we will be digging deeply into this and we will do our very best to get to the truth of it. If that takes several issues of the magazine, so be it.

Christopher Garnett, for the sake of his own reputation, now needs to be not only thorough and dogged, but also brutally honest in his findings and the transparency with which they are reported.

I am far from alone in feeling that Eurostar’s story to date just doesn’t properly hang together or stack up. If they are being straight, then maybe it's their cack-handed approach that is giving the wrong impression. I'm determined to find out.

And how very sad it makes me to have to say that about this terrible business.