Comment: The Channel Tunnel has so much more potential

Standing in a monster queue at Paris Gare du Nord a couple of weeks ago had me ranting again about the poor service offered by Eurostar.

OK, this time it was not the operator’s fault. A failure of the technology used by the French border police meant that we were all forced into special pens set up two floors below the normal entrance, staring at the strange candy store and the enticing patisserie while shuffling slowly forward.

The train eventually left (and arrived at St Pancras) half an hour late - not enough to be a real pain, nor to claim compensation.

Undoubtedly, many of the issues undermining the service standard of Eurostar are not its fault.

The whole ridiculous palaver of having every bag checked was written into the act creating the Channel Tunnel, and it cannot be ignored.

The cramped stations at both ends, especially at Gare du Nord, are again not the fault of Eurostar - although a more active and engaged company might have worked harder to improve the terminal facilities.

St Pancras does have much unused space, which despite the high cost of alterations would be worth adapting.

I wrote many years ago about the football field space at the end of the buffers, for whose existence no coherent explanation has ever been given to me.

Speeding up the check-in (which to be fair has improved with QR technology) would mean that the mandatory ‘arrive half an hour before departure’ could be removed, which in turn would create space.

Again, the high fares are not entirely Eurostar’s fault, as the charges to use HS1 and the Channel Tunnel are high. But a more flexible company might have battled harder to get them reduced.

Remarkably, Eurostar now serves fewer stations than it did before COVID, despite the addition of Amsterdam.

Of the stations blessed with the additional moniker of ‘International’, only St Pancras deserves that accolade, as Stratford has never served Eurostar, while Ebbsfleet and Ashford remain abandoned.

Eurostar complains that it is not worthwhile to pay for extra border police. But that is a poor excuse, given that this would help reduce the overcrowding at St Pancras, as well as boosting passenger numbers.

Now, however, Eurostar may at last have to be more fleet of foot, with the arrival of competition.

It is a confusing situation, with a slew of potential operators arriving like the proverbial London buses used to be, all bunched up.

There have been half a dozen companies expressing interest, and their chances of success have been boosted by the Office of Rail and Road’s decision to force Eurostar to share its east London depot at Temple Mills with other users.

However, there is still limited space, so any new operator may well have to look to other sites to store its trains overnight, and crucially to maintain them and empty the toilet tanks.

While some of these potential new players may not have the cash or the stamina ever to operate (and, indeed, there is never going to be room for all of them), this is the first time in 30 years that there is a strong possibility of Eurostar being challenged.

Virgin has said it is prepared to commit £700 million to buy a new set of trains to run services to Brussels, Paris, and even possibly Amsterdam. But we are yet to see the colour of its money. Richard Branson has a reputation of claiming to launch services which never materialise, but nevertheless he is a serious player.

So possibly is Trenitalia, although the length of a journey between (say) London and Milan, which would be around eight hours, might not be a marketable proposition.

Indeed, we have been here before. Attempts always fell at the first hurdle. Deutsche Bahn even brought one of its ICE trains through the tunnel to St Pancras in 2010, promising that services to Germany would start within a couple of years, but nothing materialised.

Now, helpfully, the Campaign for Better Transport has brought out a timely report - Runways to railways: unlocking the potential of the Channel Tunnel.

Rightly, the campaign group laments the fact that the government has shown no interest in developing an international rail policy which would encourage greater use of the tunnel and take planes out of the sky.

Indeed, boosting services through the tunnel would free up aviation capacity at Heathrow, but there has been no such co-ordinated thinking from the Department for Transport.

Instead, we have had the ridiculous decision by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to encourage the building of a third runway, which few (even in the aviation industry) believe will ever see the light of day given the environmental considerations.

The CBT report does not shy away from considering the difficulties of creating new services. Indeed, at the launch of the document Jon Worth, a long-time advocate for greater cross-Channel (and indeed cross-border) rail travel throughout Europe, gave a presentation which highlighted the difficulties.

There are some obvious destinations for high-speed rail services through the tunnel, and there has been progress on the regulatory and safety front which has opened up the possibility of more types of train being allowed in the tunnel.

No longer is it necessary to have 400-metre-long trains which could be evacuated into one half and then detached to ride out safely if there is a fire. This was always a daft scenario, and indeed was not used when there were evacuations in the tunnel.

Therefore, Worth reckons there are at least four models of high-speed train which could be accepted for use through the tunnel - built respectively by Talgo, Siemens, Alstom, and Hitachi.

However, the trains would still need separate entrances and exits at every station they serve, given the tight border requirements, and that rules out some destinations.

For example, Worth reckons that it would be impossible to serve either Lyon or Marseille, although there is a slight possibility that there might be room at Lyon airport.

Worth also reckons there could be a relatively easy win with Rotterdam, although this would require considerable labour as a platform would have to be transferred temporarily to Eurostar each time a train called there. A bit of a hassle, but feasible.

More pertinently, there are two strong possibilities which are both supported locally: a service linking London with several potential destinations in Switzerland, probably by having 200-metre-long trains serving different destinations and linking up; and a service to northern Germany, where Frankfurt, Cologne and Dusseldorf would all offer considerable markets.

That local support is crucial, as without it the already considerable difficulties become an insuperable obstacle.

However, any progress on this will require an input from the government - and preferably some serious engagement and support, and perhaps (shock horror) even some financial seed funding.

The report is right to highlight this gap in government thinking. As the report argues, the Department for Transport, HM Treasury and even Number 10 should work together to promote these links.

It concludes: “By working with European partners, the UK can ensure that international rail travel remains a practical, efficient, and sustainable option for future generations.”

There could be no better way to show that despite Brexit, we are really Europeans - especially at a time when our ‘special relationship’ with that lot over the pond is looking, well, a bit less ‘special’