Service reductions - London to Brussels and Paris - from January 2017

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From The Independent

On the day that Eurostar begins selling its cheapest-ever one-way tickets, it emerged that the cross-Channel train operator is to slash services from London to Brussels this winter.

From January, Eurostar will cut 20 trains each week between the British and Belgian capitals. On weekdays, there will be only seven daily departures in each direction, rather than the current nine.

Last month The Independent revealed that Eurostar planned to axe one departure in 12 because of falling demand between London, Paris and Brussels.

It now appears that the Belgian capital will take the brunt of the cuts.

Services from London St Pancras will still begin at 6.50am, but the 8.04am departure will be axed from January. The cancellation results in a gap of over two hours between Brussels-bound trains during the morning rush hour. Business passengers from outside London who are unable to reach the St Pancras terminus in time for the first departure will now not arrive in Brussels until the afternoon.

The evening rush hour has an even longer gap. Travellers who miss the 5.04pm train face a wait of two-and-a-half hours before the last service of the day, at 7.34pm.

Connection opportunities deeper into Belgium, and to Germany and the Netherlands, have also been reduced. London-Brussels trains also call at the city of Lille, with onward connections deeper into France.

Although 22 per cent of Anglo-Belgian services will be withdrawn, the total number of seats will not fall so sharply because of the introduction of higher-capacity trains. The e320 trains hold 902 passengers, compared with 750 for the original rolling stock.

Seat numbers on the Brussels route reduce by just 6.5% if you take into account the increase in seats by switching the rolling stock.

Even though mainland Western Europe is a single free trade / free flow area these days, international train services are not as frequent / widespread as national ones in the areas around the country borders.  In other words, on those occasions I travel by train I can look at a map and see hourly services on a spider's web of lines in two countries, yet only occasional links between those webs over the borders.   There are longer distance international trains that are distinctly less frequent that the regular national services, with the tail end of national local series making an almost apologetic incursion at a few places to the first stop beyond the border, at which point one transfers to a service of the newly entered nation.

The article refers to the drop of leisure traffic because of terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, and the lack of floods of people from Europe visiting when they were expected because of a drop in the value of the pound after the Brexit vote.  I find myself wondering if traffic has also dropped or failed to materialise towards the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) because the rest of the people of Europe feel unwelcome (remembering that the ordinary french or belgian person sees only what their press is saying) and because some of us from the UK are nervous as to the personal reception we'll get there.

I *think* Eurostar - though commercial - is largely SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) (french nationalised railway) owned, and also question whether previous service levels might have been in excess of what was needed for the flow, but maintained / provided for political 'unity' reasons that have been smashed.    And finally, I suspect that a long distance international service is far less likely to loose business when there are two and a half hour gaps in the service than a local / regional service - people may grumble, but they probably won't move to flying over it - where, although there are more flights a day than trains now, there are two operator and (I presume) no cross ticketing, so still less flexibility.

 

[ChrisB]

They are unable to run shorter trains through the tunnel....have to be full length, something to do with the tunnel metrics?

[Noggin]

They are unable to run shorter trains through the tunnel....have to be full length, something to do with the tunnel metrics?

IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) the train has to be long enough that a door is always within a carriage length of an emergency exit, so you don't get people wandering through tunnels in the event of an evacuation.

[paul7575]

They are unable to run shorter trains through the tunnel....have to be full length, something to do with the tunnel metrics?

IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) the train has to be long enough that a door is always within a carriage length of an emergency exit, so you don't get people wandering through tunnels in the event of an evacuation.

That original requirement for a train to be long enough to bridge two cross passageway doors was removed about two years ago (perhaps longer) after negotiations with the tunnel safety authority, as part of the initial changes to allow other operator's stock to operate e.g. DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about).  It turns out the North of London Eurostar sets were never long enough to met the requirement in the first place.

IIRC the requirement to split trains in two halves, and therefore have a second driver, was also removed in the same changes.

Paul

[grahame]

That original requirement for a train to be long enough to bridge two cross passageway doors was removed about two years ago (perhaps longer) after negotiations with the tunnel safety authority, as part of the initial changes to allow other operator's stock to operate e.g. DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about).  It turns out the North of London Eurostar sets were never long enough to met the requirement in the first place.

IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) the requirement to split trains in two halves, and therefore have a second driver, was also removed in the same changes.

Paul

Thanks for that clarification Paul ... I was just writing the following / have moved much into the past tense having read your update .... guess there's an opportunity now, or is the market too mature and the window of opportunity gone?

Emergency doors between the tunnels are every 375 metres ... and the requirement was for trains stopped to be opposite at least one door no matter where they stop, thus setting a minimum train length with through corridor of 15 x 26 metre carriages.  Old link at http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/policy/single-view/view/era-recommends-changes-to-channel-tunnel-safety-regime.html to the safety regime. One effect of this is that in order to meet the safety regime, a London - Paris / London - Brussels service with onward changes there could work commercially, whereas services such as Leeds to Frankfurt, Cardiff to Amsterdam, Edinburgh to Barcelona, Plymouth to Stockholm or Llandudno to Les Sables-d’Olonne were not classified safe, even if they would make huge sense as 8 car trains offering franchise competition on their UK^▸ (United Kingdom) legs to London and Ashford, and very real competition with airlines beyond.

[ChrisB]

The reqyuirement is still there according to posters on uk.railway forum. Can you show that it isn't?

[Bmblbzzz]

Sounds like they should have put the emergency tunnel exits closer together, but perhaps there were sound engineering or behavioural reasons not to.

In terms of international services, an oddity is or used to be a local service in Poland running between two Polish towns (I think it was Przemyśl to Krościenko) over then Soviet, now Ukrainian, territory. It was purely a domestic service with no border stops or passport checks, although Soviet border guards did board the train at the last stop before the border disembark at the next, the line being an artifact of post-war border changes with 19th-century networks. There was one incident in the 1980s when Solidarity activists flushed leaflets out of the track-emptying toilet; the Soviet border guards halted the train until every single one had been picked up.

[John R]

Sounds like they should have put the emergency tunnel exits closer together, but perhaps there were sound engineering or behavioural reasons not to.

Or cost.  Several compromises were made to keep the cost down given the financial challenges effectively broke the company building it. I recall one to be that the maximum speed of trains through the tunnel was reduced. Easy in hindsight to say that a little more should have been spent, but the original shareholders lost all value in it if I recall with those that lent the debt ending up owning the majority of the business after a financial reconstruction.

[stuving]

The reqyuirement is still there according to posters on uk.railway forum. Can you show that it isn't?

The change to drop the second driver requirement is on the IGC website:

Requirement for second train driver on passenger trains

On 3 June 2014, the IGC wrote to Eurotunnel and Eurostar to inform them that it had decided to modify the current rule relating to the driving competence of the second train manager (TM2) on board high speed passenger trains.

The existing rule requiring that a second train crew member is competent to drive the train in the event of an emergency has been removed, and new rules related to the procedure for swiftly reversing passenger trains created. Eurotunnel has been invited to make the consequential amendments to the relevant documents.

Eurotunnel's 2010 Network Statement contains this in Annex 2:

3.7.  Evacuation  safety   
The availability of emergency exits every 375m into the protected environment of  the service tunnel is a  main  feature  of  the  safety  arrangements  for   occupants  of  the  Channel  Tunnel.  One  of  the  pre- conditions  for  efficient  and  safe  evacuation  of  passengers  in  an  emergency  is   to  stop  the  train,  and   more  specifically  a  coach  carrying  passengers  or  directly  accessible  by  passengers,  alongside  an   emergency  exit.  In  order  for  this  condition  to   be  systematically  achieved,  irrespective  of  stopping   conditions  in  particular,  passenger  trains  are  norm ally  required  to  be  at  least  375m  long  (excluding   power  cars,  unless  passengers  can  easily  evacuate   from  them)  and  passengers  have  to  be  able  to   pass  from  one  end  to  the  other.  This  base  configuration  provides  the  optimum  conditions  of  safety  if   evacuation is necessary.

So it wasn't an absolute requirement. The 2015 Network Statement has no such statement.

The change may be in the IGC site ... hidden under a heap of bureaucratic verbiage.  But I suspect it's the operator's interpretation of a more general safety requirement, approved as part of the Network Statement.

The Siemens Velaro e320 trains for Eurostar were approved by a decision of 19 November 2015.

[ChrisB]

But aren't the e320s actually longer tgan the older Eurostars, not shorter? The take aclot more pax....

[stuving]

But aren't the e320s actually longer tgan the older Eurostars, not shorter? The take aclot more pax....

Yes - that line was just put in for the record.  l

If you read those words, they ask for 375 m omitting the power cars as there are no passenger doors in the them. So that reduces the length from 387 to 343 m - less than 375.

These Velaros are 400 m long, and do have doors in the end cars (but are they passenger ones?). What they don't have (as I read somewhere) is the ability to be split and each half to be driven on its own. I can't see that requirement written anywhere - though maybe it was removed before 2010. In any case, it's history now.

[ChrisB]

So Eurostar are stuck with long, large-capacity trains.

Which is the point I was originally making - they can't run trains with lengths suitable for lower loadings (by removing carriages effectively), hence needing to remove whole trains to reduce capacity

[stuving]

So Eurostar are stuck with long, large-capacity trains.

Which is the point I was originally making - they can't run trains with lengths suitable for lower loadings (by removing carriages effectively), hence needing to remove whole trains to reduce capacity

Why not? There were two desirables (not true requirements) up to 2010 (or maybe later), for 375 m length and for end-to-end gangways. The latter really makes sense only with the ability to split the train in the middle as well, wherever that was stated. But neither appears to apply now.

Of course such requirements may now be somewhere else. The main place would the the RST TSI - but that says very little about trains, and nothing about this kind of detail.

What I should have added: The end-to-end gangway requirement on its own would (if present) preclude half-length trains run in pairs and split for two destinations. That offers another way of reducing capacity, but without reducing service intervals. Siemens would have been quite happy to make them like that, I'm sure, but evidently they weren't asked.

[ChrisB]

Hmmm, I still think it's more than desirables, sorry. And you can't produce any evidence either. Other fora seem to think this way too.

[Noggin]

So Eurostar are stuck with long, large-capacity trains.

Which is the point I was originally making - they can't run trains with lengths suitable for lower loadings (by removing carriages effectively), hence needing to remove whole trains to reduce capacity

To be honest, I doubt the marginal cost of an extra vehicle is that high, what you are paying big money for though is the crew plus track access through the tunnel and through the relevant countries, so if you ain't got enough bums on seats, that's not being covered.

Could also be viewed as an opportunistic move on the part of Eurostar - by cutting services now whilst it's understandable due to terrorists, Brexit, economy etc, they are bolstering their financial position. If they leave it and have to do it in the middle of Brexit they could open themselves and the French government open to all sorts of nasty headlines.