Eurostar takes on airplanes in green travel push

Eurostar takes on airplanes in green travel push

A faster service between London and Amsterdam is part of a broader push to boost rail over air travel.

By JOSHUA POSANER 2/4/20, 4:00 PM CET Updated 2/5/20, 8:13 AM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/eurostar-takes-on-airplanes-in-green-travel-push/

LONDON — Eurostar has declared war on airlines running flights between London and Amsterdam, looking to ride a wave of climate concern to grab a larger passenger share by offering a greener alternative to flying.

From the end of April, the operator will start running direct trains on its existing route from Amsterdam through Brussels into London without the need for a stop for passport and security checks in the EU capital. That cuts the travel time by at least 30 minutes to around four hours — competitive with a flight, Eurostar argues.

"We believe we are tapping into a climate change agenda which will become more and more intense," Mike Cooper, Eurostar's CEO, said on board Tuesday's first trial service running into London.

Flights take about 75 minutes, but trains between Amsterdam and London are competitive because there is no need for lengthy check-ins and they take passengers from city center to city center.

While the route from London to Amsterdam has run with no interruption since 2018, the service in the opposite direction was hampered by the need for passengers to get off in Brussels for passport controls. The faster direct run will formally start from Amsterdam on April 30, and from Rotterdam on May 18, and Eurostar is moving to expand its daily departures from the Dutch capital to four a day.

The faster Amsterdam-London run is part of a broader rethink of rail travel as concerns grow over the environmental impact of flying.

The dream of taking on air travel is still a distant one. Eurostar has sold 570,000 tickets on the Amsterdam-London route since April 2018, while airlines sell 4.3 million tickets a year between the two cities.

High-speed rail links to the U.K. have been hampered by the need for passport checks — necessary because it isn't a member of the Schengen passport-free travel area — and a requirement for airport-style security controls. Although Eurostar first pledged to expand to Amsterdam in 2013, it took more than a year of talks among the Dutch, Belgian, French and British governments to agree on a new treaty for managing border controls — a deal announced four days after the U.K. quit the EU.

 “The days of passengers being forced to decamp from the train at Brussels to file through passport control will soon be over, as we look forward to direct, return, high-speed services to Amsterdam and beyond,” Grant Shapps, the U.K. transport minister, said at London's St Pancras station.

"We want to see seamless connections with continental high-speed networks to destinations lighting up the departure boards with major cities across Europe," said Shapps.

The faster Amsterdam-London run is part of a broader rethink of rail travel as concerns grow over the environmental impact of flying. Traveling the route by train saves as much as 80 percent of CO2 compared with an equivalent short-haul flight across the North Sea, argues Eurostar.

"It's one of our main goals to substitute as many flights for trains because the carbon footprint is much better," Dutch Infrastructure Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen told POLITICO at Amsterdam Central ahead of the first departure.

Green speed

Rail advocates are looking to compete against flights both by speeding up intercity connections — as demonstrated by Tuesday's train to London — as well as by increasing the number of night trains that can deliver passengers into the heart of a European city at the start of a business day.

Delivering on those pledges costs money — everything from building new passport booths and security screening facilities at Amsterdam's clogged central station to subsidizing a night train from the Dutch capital to Vienna, set to start in December.

Countries need to spend billions on upgrading tracks and stations and focus on international links rather than prioritizing domestic routes. Meanwhile, infrastructure managers need to get serious about installing European standard signaling systems so that their trains are compatible with networks in various countries.

While hundreds of platforms have access to airline data and spit out multileg bookings at the best price, train operators often hoard their bookings, especially the cheaper fares.

Hopes for new high-speed continental links rest on plans to merge Thalys and Eurostar — both part-owned by French and Belgian state railways SNCF and SNCB. The pitch is to create a five-country network that would be attractive enough to ramp up passenger numbers from a combined 18.5 million today to 30 million by 2030.

"Thalys would give us access to the German market, which would be an important consideration," Cooper said of the merger plan, still caught up in negotiations between management and pending EU approval. Such a deal could theoretically see direct London-to-Frankfurt trains in the future, a route that's only been tested once by Deutsche Bahn before the company backed out of a commercial launch.

For rail to compete effectively with flying, train operators also need to revamp their approach to information technology and open up access to their fares.

Mark Smith, who runs the rail website the Man in Seat 61, said much more work needs to be done on ticketing platforms to make it easy and affordable to travel by rail. While hundreds of platforms have access to airline data and are able to rapidly spit out multileg bookings at the best price, train operators often hoard their bookings, especially the cheaper fares, making it tough to secure affordable, easy tickets for a cross-border journey such as Berlin to London.

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