Getlink aiming to double the number of destinations from London in ten years

[SynthD]

Back to the "space at St Pancras" question: where do you end up if you go down the emergency exits at the northern end of the international platforms? And/or what’s directly above the car park? Could that space become part of an expanded international terminal?

The exits lead to the building on the north side of Pancras Rd. Above the car park is more car park, it’s over 500 spaces on two levels, plus car rental. The internal road probably has to stay, but how many of the back rooms, including customs and border patrols’ needs, can be moved north of this road, into what is now the car park?

 

[zwk500]

Is there any thoughts that the tunnel charges are too high and will be significantly reduced?

If there are, it'll need the ART, the French equivalent of the ORR to agree:

Channel Tunnel | Office of Rail and Road

The Channel Tunnel is the fixed link between the United Kingdom and France consisting of two railway tunnels plus a service tunnel, operated by Eurotunnel.

www.orr.gov.uk

 

[RT4038]

Oh, but they are, because the Lyria fit exactly into all the domestic and international connections offered in Switzerland, especially in Basel and Zurich (out of necessity as much as out of conviction, but in this case that goes hand in hand).

Obviously, if all domestic connections run frequently then connections are made by default. However not sure that Lyria to international connections 'fit exactly' - looking at Paris-Geneva connecting to Geneva-Milano, or Paris-Zurich with Zurich-Austria trains could be described as such.

If SNCF and E* were run as SBB is, there would be regular intervals all around and good, regular connections at Lille Europe. No need for a Lille Hbf or any other investment in this case - the French LGV network is predestined for a Takt.

I think that you mean 'if SNCF and E* were run on the principles of SBB domestic services' - SBB are not particularly impressive on International services - either they don't run them or they are on E* principles generally. The demographics and railway geography of Switzerland is not the same as that of France - I really cannot see there being enough business and therefore be economic to have Lille Europe as some kind of major junction hub, separated from its local domestic services at a different station, and trains frequently travelling to other parts of France (and beyond?) avoiding Paris city centre. Paris is the undisputed hub of France and any services avoiding such a major traffic point are going to be marginal at best. Switzerland (and Germany) simply do not have the equivalent.

Since you don't have any argument - what you write is basically nonsensical - , it seems your posts are your usual agression towards anyone mentioning possible improvements to international services, be it to the UK or on the continent, because you are obsessed with it being a bad idea. I won't bother answering you in the future.

I am sorry that you don't agree with my viewpoint but it would be a boring world if we all agreed with each other!

Yes, I don't think that SBB do everything right - their International service is nothing to shout about, and they have received huge sums of investment and ongoing subsidy from the Swiss government/people to be where they are now in relation to domestic services. Sorry if pointing out some of the shortcomings is interpreted as aggression.

Of course I would like to see improved International services, but this is tempered with what I think is likely to be economic, affordable and practicable, bearing in mind air fares and aeroplane journey times. Lille has had more International services in the past (including direct trains via Hirson-Metz-Strasbourg to Basle) but the whole landscape of international travel and rail operations has completely changed which is unlikely to be reversed. I do not think France (the Government, the people, SNCF and/or E*) is likely to be pouring money into huge amounts of extra trains and train miles to run regular interval trains on lines not serving Paris city centre, mostly serving the citizens of other countries but not competitive enough to yield sufficient revenue. Yes it could be done in a practical timetabling sense, but I don't think think it will be - sufficient market is simply not there, in spite of the rose tinted view of some British enthusiasts longing for the halcyon days of Wagon-Lits etc.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

I think that you mean 'if SNCF and E* were run on the principles of SBB domestic services' - SBB are not particularly impressive on International services - either they don't run them or they are on E* principles generally. The demographics and railway geography of Switzerland is not the same as that of France - I really cannot see there being enough business and therefore be economic to have Lille Europe as some kind of major junction hub, separated from its local domestic services at a different station, and trains frequently travelling to other parts of France (and beyond?) avoiding Paris city centre. Paris is the undisputed hub of France and any services avoiding such a major traffic point are going to be marginal at best. Switzerland (and Germany) simply do not have the equivalent.


Of course I would like to see improved International services, but this is tempered with what I think is likely to be economic, affordable and practicable, bearing in mind air fares and aeroplane journey times. Lille has had more International services in the past (including direct trains via Hirson-Metz-Strasbourg to Basle) but the whole landscape of international travel and rail operations has completely changed which is unlikely to be reversed. I do not think France (the Government, the people, SNCF and/or E*) is likely to be pouring money into huge amounts of extra trains and train miles to run regular interval trains on lines not serving Paris city centre, mostly serving the citizens of other countries but not competitive enough to yield sufficient revenue. Yes it could be done in a practical timetabling sense, but I don't think think it will be - sufficient market is simply not there, in spite of the rose tinted view of some British enthusiasts longing for the halcyon days of Wagon-Lits etc.

There are 12 TGV services a day from Lille Europe (some starting back at Brussels) and 8 from Lille Flandres, with more at weekends and in the summer, that avoid Paris via the 'Interconnexion' to various parts of France. It is not exactly a 'thin' service is it? The main attraction for French domestic passengers, of course, is that they provide easy access to Charles de Gaulle airport. Strasbourg has a through TGV from Lille Europe (admitedly without an outward London connection) which is far quicker that the old boat-train route via Metz.

 

[RT4038]

There are 12 TGV services a day from Lille Europe (some starting back at Brussels) and 8 from Lille Flandres, with more at weekends and in the summer, that avoid Paris via the 'Interconnexion' to various parts of France. It is not exactly a 'thin' service is it? The main attraction for French domestic passengers, of course, is that they provide easy access to Charles de Gaulle airport. Strasbourg has a through TGV from Lille Europe (admitedly without an outward London connection) which is far quicker that the old boat-train route via Metz.

There are quite a number of trains but they are serving a lot of routes to the scattered corners of France , with some of those routes only getting one or two trains per day. I am not doubting that there is some traffic; I suspect these trains are marginal economically compared to services to and from central Paris, but I do not think Lille is likely to become a 'super hub' with regular interval trains to multiple diverse destinations. (regular interval being at least every two hours throughout the day - [ my definition (!) ], and connecting with a London service during the hours that is possible). With there only being a London-Lille every 2 hours, which also caters for Brussels and sometimes Amsterdam passengers, this doesn't allow many passengers to be connecting to each of the Lyon-Marseille/Montpelier/Strasbourg/Bordeaux/Rennes/Nantes trains. Is there really going to be enough passengers, day in day out, month in month out to make that financially viable? I doubt it.

We in the UK are, of course, very London connection orientated, but it may well be that the demands of departing / arriving French (and/or Belgian domestic traffic) does not correspond with that of London passengers, with nearly one third of the current departures being prior to the first arrival from London. I suspect this is also to do with maximising utilisation of rolling stock in a days' duty cycle.

Having two stations in Lille is more than a little handicap to it to become a hub for both long distance and regional services (I know it is not far between the two [Euston-St Pancras?] but still a barrier. The scheduled departure of some daytime TGVs from Flandres rather than Europe is, I guess, to do with local politics of otherwise downgrading of Flandres station to a local station? Could more be done to improve E* - SNCF connections at Lille for UK passengers? Probably, but I suspect there are various trade-offs/priorities with French domestic requirements vs. the likely demand.

Incidentally - I think there is a direct Lille Europe-Strasbourg train (#9874) dep 14h01, arr 17h37 which has a connection from London dep 11h01. Certainly much faster than the traditional route, but requires a further change to get to Basel at 19h08. So about 3 hours faster in total!

 

[Chester1]

It depends, if the competition is serving Paris/other (currently) high value routes and making that less profitable than the other routes then it's possible that they could look to other routes to make money.

Clearly the reason that Paris makes money is you can fill trains, however if others are trying that too but at a lower cost/offering something better there may not be the benefit in providing more services than they currently do to Paris.

For example, if they are currently running 50 services a day to Paris and 30 to other locations and someone else comes along to run 35 services to Paris, would it really be worth them run 65 services to Paris and 15 to other locations when that would mean that rather than 50 services a day to Paris there's now 100 services to Paris (or effectively halving the loading of each train unless you've managed to grow the numbers using it significantly)?

Personally I'd be looking at what could I do to make those other locations more attractive to more people, so that those trains get better loadings. For example, could you work with others to create a travel hub where not only UK trains go but also local and long distance trains so there's a lot of people wanting to go there to go somewhere else.

This was my point. Eurostar will have to slash prices on its core routes and even then they made not been able to fill the same number of services as today. I am skeptical any of the competitors will run but if they do they are likely to oversaturate the London-Paris/Brussels markets. The only way the core market focus would work would be if they sustain fierce competition for sufficient time that the new operator(s) fail and their monopoly returns.

 

[RT4038]

This was my point. Eurostar will have to slash prices on its core routes and even then they made not been able to fill the same number of services as today. I am skeptical any of the competitors will run but if they do they are likely to oversaturate the London-Paris/Brussels markets. The only way the core market focus would work would be if they sustain fierce competition for sufficient time that the new operator(s) fail and their monopoly returns.

Although on those core markets London-Paris and London-Brussels-Amsterdam it could be that the market could be grown sufficiently to sustain two competitive operators, like Trenitalia and NTV in Italy ?

 

[MatthewHutton]

Yes, but they are E* style operation - not particularly different from E*. SBB are not doing anything differently on that corridor to E*


So if E* was run like SBB, they would have a joint share in a Lyria style operation with GBR? Not sure that would be any better than the current arrangements. Taking a leaf out of the SBB book, I doubt there would be much or even any local service across the border (their one border through a long tunnel doesn't exactly have a regular service of either local or long distance trains [Brig-Domodossola] ) - SBB don't run lots of cross border services, and no local services penetrating any distance into neighbouring countries.

Of course, it is not what SBB decides as such, but what the people of Switzerland are prepared to put their money into - would they have sorted out a Lille Hbf or, more importantly, a Paris Hbf, to make all these seemless connections viable? We do not know, because SBB doesn't have to grapple with such an issue.

TGV Lyria runs two hourly all day from Paris to Zurich and Geneva. That is vastly superior to the handful of trains a day and massive service gaps with the trains from Paris to Italy, Spain and Germany.

There are 12 TGV services a day from Lille Europe (some starting back at Brussels) and 8 from Lille Flandres, with more at weekends and in the summer, that avoid Paris via the 'Interconnexion' to various parts of France. It is not exactly a 'thin' service is it? The main attraction for French domestic passengers, of course, is that they provide easy access to Charles de Gaulle airport. Strasbourg has a through TGV from Lille Europe (admitedly without an outward London connection) which is far quicker that the old boat-train route via Metz.

I mean 20 TGV services a day from Lille which has excellent high speed connections to London, Brussels and the rest of France is pretty damn weak. In Britain cross country runs a heck of a lot more service than that from e.g Bristol.

Although on those core markets London-Paris and London-Brussels-Amsterdam it could be that the market could be grown sufficiently to sustain two competitive operators, like Trenitalia and NTV in Italy ?

The Italians have 3-4 fast trains an hour on the Milan-Rome line because of competition.

Incidentally - I think there is a direct Lille Europe-Strasbourg train (#9874) dep 14h01, arr 17h37 which has a connection from London dep 11h01. Certainly much faster than the traditional route, but requires a further change to get to Basel at 19h08. So about 3 hours faster in total!

But you are absolutely screwed if the Eurostar is more than 20 minutes late.

Frankly given the European Parliament being in two cities Brussels-Strasbourg should probably be 2 hourly all day.

 

[ShadowKnight]

Regarding depot access. There seems to be limited capacity at temple mills for more than 2 operators. Therefore would there be perhaps more advantage for a third operator to ordering UK loading gauge trains that can access depots on the classic UK network?

 

[nwales58]

In Britain cross country runs a heck of a lot more service than that from e.g Bristol.

The capacities are similar. XC runs 200 or 260 seat units, sometimes doubled. SNCF runs 350-500 seat units, often doubled over the busiest stretches, varying by day. Eg TGV 5102 has 350/500/700 seats by day of week. TGV 5010 is 700/850.

Someone can calculate accurately, but off the top of my head XC delivers around 7000 seats per day Bristol-Birmingham plus a bit less Reading-Birmingham, say 12000 total. SNCF’s 20 Lille interregionals would match that if offering an average of 600 seats per service. Some days may be a bit lower and peak days will be higher than XCs capacity.

 

[Route115?]

The trouble is that E* runs long trains with c800 seats and that is simply too much capacity for destinations other than Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and as long as they have to be sealed trains there is no chance of filling them with local traffic in Europe. That is why Geneva, Basel & Marseilles are unlikely to work. However, there is absolutely to reason why good connections, possibly with the same train number wouldn't work. There would have to be at least a 30 minute transfer time at Lille (or Brussels) for security and immigration (the latter using automated gates) but of course you could turn up a few minutes before departure time at the origin which would partially offset this. There is no reason wht you couldn't fill 200 seats from Geneva (and more than once per day) which combined wirh Basel, Marseilles, Cologne, etc would allow additional trains to run.

You could repeat the process at Ashford with timed connections to Brighton and possibly Clapham Junction.

I recently tried to get a staff ticket to Amsterdam. There were three trains per day but the first would have required overnight hotel accommodation in London, the second arrived too late in Amsterdam and the third was fully booked (though hopefully not for public fares). I was able to get a ticket to Brussels at a reasonably time and there is good onward travel (and the Benelux railways are amongst the few I still get free travel as retired staff on) but but it suggests that E* may not be offering enough capacity.

As I have mentioned before, I an not wholly convinced by competition, I think that there are advantages to a universal operator if they are required to provide public as well as commercial services, but right now E* is a monopoly which only provides a limited range of services that it considers commercially viable. You would hope that competition could grow the market. The danger is that whilst new operators will force E* to up its game with additional stops at Ashford, etc, the smaller operators will be forced out of the market and we could be back to square one. Time will tell. I certainly can't see SNCF co-operating with the new operators when it owns much of E*. Having two long distance brands doesn't help. OuiGo is not designed for connections so you would have to rely on InOui or Lyria. (I still can't see why you don't have both brands in the same train but I obviously think along different lines to SNCF.)

 

[zwk500]

Regarding depot access. There seems to be limited capacity at temple mills for more than 2 operators. Therefore would there be perhaps more advantage for a third operator to ordering UK loading gauge trains that can access depots on the classic UK network?

Not particularly, as there is limited capacity through south London to make use of the facility so you'd be constraining your train size (and increasing your cost of design) purely for the servicing moves.
I suspect the long term answer to depot capacity at London will be to put some stabling sidings near Ashford, and accept the hit of needing some early morning ECS paths, as European gauge trains are cleared through the Ashford area.

You could repeat the process at Ashford with timed connections to Brighton and possibly Clapham Junction.

Why would people from Brighton get a singular train to Ashford which will be limited in length when there's 4x 12-car tph to St Pancras?
And are you imagining the Victoria-Eastbourne/Ore service being extended to provide the Clapham Junction connection? Those trains are already heavily loaded even from the coast, never mind Gatwick.

People from Sussex who'd use Ashford are almost certainly going to be driving there.

 

[ShadowKnight]

Not particularly, as there is limited capacity through south London to make use of the facility so you'd be constraining your train size (and increasing your cost of design) purely for the servicing moves.
I suspect the long term answer to depot capacity at London will be to put some stabling sidings near Ashford, and accept the hit of needing some early morning ECS paths, as European gauge trains are cleared through the Ashford area.

Why would people from Brighton get a singular train to Ashford which will be limited in length when there's 4x 12-car tph to St Pancras?
And are you imagining the Victoria-Eastbourne/Ore service being extended to provide the Clapham Junction connection? Those trains are already heavily loaded even from the coast, never mind Gatwick.

People from Sussex who'd use Ashford are almost certainly going to be driving there.

If connecting local services were included as part of the fare of the high speed service (as RENFE does in Spain) that would make regional stations like Ashford more attractive

 

[MatthewHutton]

The capacities are similar. XC runs 200 or 260 seat units, sometimes doubled. SNCF runs 350-500 seat units, often doubled over the busiest stretches, varying by day. Eg TGV 5102 has 350/500/700 seats by day of week. TGV 5010 is 700/850.

Someone can calculate accurately, but off the top of my head XC delivers around 7000 seats per day Bristol-Birmingham plus a bit less Reading-Birmingham, say 12000 total. SNCF’s 20 Lille interregionals would match that if offering an average of 600 seats per service. Some days may be a bit lower and peak days will be higher than XCs capacity.

Yeah but then all we are saying is that the TGV trains are too long and should be shorter and run more frequently.

Having a 4 car train every 30 minutes from Bristol to Birmingham is better than a 16 car train every 2 hours - although actually the 4 car trains get full so probably an 8 car train every 30 minutes is justified.

 

[RT4038]

TGV Lyria runs two hourly all day from Paris to Zurich and Geneva. That is vastly superior to the handful of trains a day and massive service gaps with the trains from Paris to Italy, Spain and Germany.

Trains with journey times of Paris to Milan and Barcelona simply have too much air competition to economically justify frequent train services, plus the economics of train sets only being used for one seven hour journey in a day. Much the same as in the UK with London-Aberdeen and Inverness.

I mean 20 TGV services a day from Lille which has excellent high speed connections to London, Brussels and the rest of France is pretty damn weak. In Britain cross country runs a heck of a lot more service than that from e.g Bristol.

I think the demographics and geography of the French provinces is very different to that of the UK; there is no real equivalent of the Bristol-Cheltenham-Birmingham-Manchester/Burton-Derby-Sheffield-Chesterfield-Leeds-York axis at those kind of populations and distances in between each other. The UK Cross Country service encapsulates a lot of short local journeys as well as the more long distance traffic, which does not exist in France in the same way.

The Italians have 3-4 fast trains an hour on the Milan-Rome line because of competition.

That is Domestic (which has different characteristics to 'International') and also has several major cities en route, which E* does not in a practical traffic generating sense. However, I would have thought there would be space for another operator, even if that kind of frequency is unlikely to be achieved in the long term.

But you are absolutely screwed if the Eurostar is more than 20 minutes late.

Frankly given the European Parliament being in two cities Brussels-Strasbourg should probably be 2 hourly all day.

Any connection using the last train is going to be problemmatic. Presumably if the connection was missed you would take the 17h51 train to Paris, walk round to the Gare de L'Est and then the 20h25 to Strasbourg? Annoying and inconvenient, but not a disaster!

I am not sure why or how the European administration being in the two cities would necessarily justify a regular interval service? That sounds like wishful thinking. Perhaps the 1600 or so seats that travel between the two places on the trains currently available are more than sufficient for the number of passengers wishing to travel? Any others can always travel via Paris for additional connections?

The trouble is that E* runs long trains with c800 seats and that is simply too much capacity for destinations other than Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and as long as they have to be sealed trains there is no chance of filling them with local traffic in Europe. That is why Geneva, Basel & Marseilles are unlikely to work.

Yes, I think you are right. Short trains are just not cost effective (extra staffing costs too high plus track access costs)

However, there is absolutely to reason why good connections, possibly with the same train number wouldn't work. There would have to be at least a 30 minute transfer time at Lille (or Brussels) for security and immigration (the latter using automated gates) but of course you could turn up a few minutes before departure time at the origin which would partially offset this. There is no reason wht you couldn't fill 200 seats from Geneva (and more than once per day) which combined wirh Basel, Marseilles, Cologne, etc would allow additional trains to run.

I doubt that 200 seats would be economic to operate from any of these places, and I doubt that anything like 200 seats could be filled on a day-in day-out basis anyway. (Maybe a few peak days at holiday times?). The changing will be off putting to so many people (compared with flying much more quickly, and most likely at a cheaper fare) which will depress demand considerably. 30 minutes connection? Another poster is baulking at a 35 minute connection at Lille after the train has been going for not long over an hour (without immigration/security procedures) so how comfortable would you be at that short a time following a 4 hour run, including immigration/security?

I recently tried to get a staff ticket to Amsterdam. There were three trains per day but the first would have required overnight hotel accommodation in London, the second arrived too late in Amsterdam and the third was fully booked (though hopefully not for public fares). I was able to get a ticket to Brussels at a reasonably time and there is good onward travel (and the Benelux railways are amongst the few I still get free travel as retired staff on) but but it suggests that E* may not be offering enough capacity.

So there are 3 trains per day, which you have discounted two as not being convenient for your particular journey, and the conclusion is that there is not enough capacity? Book earlier or on one of the other trains possibly? When all 3 trains are fully booked on a consistent basis, then I am sure they, or any possible competitor will consider more.

As I have mentioned before, I an not wholly convinced by competition, I think that there are advantages to a universal operator if they are required to provide public as well as commercial services, but right now E* is a monopoly which only provides a limited range of services that it considers commercially viable. You would hope that competition could grow the market. The danger is that whilst new operators will force E* to up its game with additional stops at Ashford, etc, the smaller operators will be forced out of the market and we could be back to square one. Time will tell.

I don't think a new operator will 'force E* to ..... stop at Ashford etc'. I suspect that the cost of manning this station (French immigration, E* staff and security guards to prevent unauthorised access) is simply too much for the traffic on offer. Unless the new competitor starts stopping there, in which case they will be lumped with these costs and E* would be content to sail past offering the fastest journey times and not have that cost pressure.

 

[Trainbike46]

We in the UK are, of course, very London connection orientated, but it may well be that the demands of departing / arriving French (and/or Belgian domestic traffic) does not correspond with that of London passengers, with nearly one third of the current departures being prior to the first arrival from London. I suspect this is also to do with maximising utilisation of rolling stock in a days' duty cycle.

Potentially that could be resolved by adding a Lille stop on either the 06.01 departure to Paris or the 06.16 departure to Amsterdam. That way, the first arrival in Lille would be one hour earlier, and hopefully that would enable more connections.

I recently tried to get a staff ticket to Amsterdam. There were three trains per day but the first would have required overnight hotel accommodation in London, the second arrived too late in Amsterdam and the third was fully booked (though hopefully not for public fares). I was able to get a ticket to Brussels at a reasonably time and there is good onward travel (and the Benelux railways are amongst the few I still get free travel as retired staff on) but but it suggests that E* may not be offering enough capacity.

There is talk of increasing it to 5 services a day, and recently the per-train capacity from Amsterdam was increased very significantly. Long-term I hope this will go to at least every 2 hours

 

[MatthewHutton]

I doubt that 200 seats would be economic to operate from any of these places, and I doubt that anything like 200 seats could be filled on a day-in day-out basis anyway. (Maybe a few peak days at holiday times?). The changing will be off putting to so many people (compared with flying much more quickly, and most likely at a cheaper fare) which will depress demand considerably. 30 minutes connection? Another poster is baulking at a 35 minute connection at Lille after the train has been going for not long over an hour (without immigration/security procedures) so how comfortable would you be at that short a time following a 4 hour run, including immigration/security?

We run tonnes and tonnes of trains in the Uk with less than 200 seats in total - let alone 200 passengers. I believe the break even point in terms of marginal costs is sub 100 passengers on a 16 car train with reasonable staffing.

 

[Trainbike46]

Regarding the Amsterdam connection, there is apparently a shortage of Dutch Border officers for exit checks, meaning that fully booked out services from Amsterdam may be delayed due to not all passengers who arrived on time having made it through border checks quickly enough. Apparently this will be resolved after summer when ePassportgates get installed at Amsterdam.

https://www.treinreiziger.nl/eurostart-waarschuwt-voor-vertraging-naar-londen-door-langere-paspoortcontrole/

Why does nonsense like this keep happening on the Amsterdam service?

 

[MatthewHutton]

Trains with journey times of Paris to Milan and Barcelona simply have too much air competition to economically justify frequent train services, plus the economics of train sets only being used for one seven hour journey in a day. Much the same as in the UK with London-Aberdeen and Inverness.

Ok but Paris-Stuttgart or Paris-Frankfurt also have terrible service levels (worse than Glasgow-Fort William for example) even though both ends are large cities and the journey times are under 4 hours end-end.

And frankly for say Paris-Milan or Paris-Barcelona the destinations are much larger than Aberdeen or Inverness - plus there is much more plausible onward journeys from both than Inverness and Aberdeen.

 

[Bald Rick]

We run tonnes and tonnes of trains in the Uk with less than 200 seats in total - let alone 200 passengers. I believe the break even point in terms of marginal costs is sub 100 passengers on a 16 car train with reasonable staffing.

Almost all those trains with fewer than 200 passengers on them in this country lose money handsomely. There’s no way thst the break even point is 100 passengers on a 16 car train (even assuming eurostar fares). Eurostar’s breakeven point will be close to 7-800.

Ok but Paris-Stuttgart or Paris-Frankfurt also have terrible service levels (worse than Glasgow-Fort William for example) even though both ends are large cities and the journey times are under 4 hours end-end.

And frankly for say Paris-Milan or Paris-Barcelona the destinations are much larger than Aberdeen or Inverness - plus there is much more plausible onward journeys from both than Inverness and Aberdeen.

And that is because the international routes yiu mention don’t have sufficient demand to drive a higher service.

 

[MikeFromLFE]

While this thought is very 'thick crayon' like - could a potential cross-channel operator also run a (small) number of UK open-access routes from/to Ashford and/or Ebbsfleet to act as feeders for their cross-channel route.
I genuinely don't know the geography of the south-east to know how feasible this might be for feeders from other parts of England

 

[Trainbike46]

Almost all those trains with fewer than 200 passengers on them in this country lose money handsomely. There’s no way thst the break even point is 100 passengers on a 16 car train (even assuming eurostar fares). Eurostar’s breakeven point will be close to 7-800.

I would assume it will be lower than that, given the e300s have 750 seats, and I can't imagine they only break even if those trains fully sell out. Unless the operating costs differ significantly between an e320 and an e300?

 

[MatthewHutton]

Almost all those trains with fewer than 200 passengers on them in this country lose money handsomely. There’s no way thst the break even point is 100 passengers on a 16 car train (even assuming eurostar fares). Eurostar’s breakeven point will be close to 7-800.

I find it extremely unlikely the short trains aren’t covering their marginal costs.

Hell Chiltern trains are mostly short and they have low fares and they even nearly cover their fixed costs as well.

And that is because the international routes yiu mention don’t have sufficient demand to drive a higher service.

I really doubt the demand from Paris-Stuttgart is lower than Glasgow-Fort William. Fort William is village sized.

 

[Bald Rick]

I really doubt the demand from Paris-Stuttgart is lower than Glasgow-Fort William. Fort William is village sized.

I didn’t say it was. Glasgow - Fort William also requires an astronomical subsidy per passenger.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I would assume it will be lower than that, given the e300s have 750 seats, and I can't imagine they only break even if those trains fully sell out. Unless the operating costs differ significantly between an e320 and an e300?

There’s marginal and fixed costs for a railway. The fixed costs for a railway are high and the marginal costs are low.

That is why shutting the ticket offices was a mistake and was reversed. Yes few people use them but railway revenue flows straight through to the bottom line.

 

[Bald Rick]

I find it extremely unlikely the short trains aren’t covering their marginal costs.

That depends what you count as marginal costs.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I didn’t say it was. Glasgow - Fort William also requires an astronomical subsidy per passenger.

I doubt the Fort William line is subsidised in terms of marginal costs.

 

[Bald Rick]

That is why shutting the ticket offices was a mistake and was reversed.

It’s not. That was emtirely political.

I doubt the Fort William line is subsidised in terms of marginal costs.

It very much is! The only Scotrail services that cover their marginal costs are Edinburgh - Glasgow via Falkirk.

Fort William - Glasgow will cost somewhere in the region of £10-£15m a year just in crew, fuel and rolling stock lease costs, and that excludes the sleeper.

 

[MatthewHutton]

It very much is! The only Scotrail services that cover their marginal costs are Edinburgh - Glasgow via Falkirk

That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

I am calling the costs to keep a line open, up to speed to run say one train a day as “fixed”.

I mean if the marginal costs were large the railways costs would have dropped meaningfully during Covid.

 

[Chester1]

Regarding the Amsterdam connection, there is apparently a shortage of Dutch Border officers for exit checks, meaning that fully booked out services from Amsterdam may be delayed due to not all passengers who arrived on time having made it through border checks quickly enough. Apparently this will be resolved after summer when ePassportgates get installed at Amsterdam.

https://www.treinreiziger.nl/eurostart-waarschuwt-voor-vertraging-naar-londen-door-langere-paspoortcontrole/

Why does nonsense like this keep happening on the Amsterdam service?

It's probably just not a priority vs manning Schiphol.