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Eurostar trains run empty by one third.

 Eurostar is being forced to run trains more than a third empty dur­ing its morn­ing peak because of

Eurostar

delays caused by post-Brexit bor­der arrange­ments, the rail ser­vice’s new chief exec­ut­ive has revealed.

Gwen­do­line Cazenave told the Fin­an­cial Times that demand had reboun­ded strongly from the pan­demic, but sta­tions in Lon­don, Paris and Brus­sels could not handle more pas­sen­gers owing to strict pass­port checks intro­duced in 2021.

«Cus­tom­ers back overnight, but the sys­tem does not work any­more,» said Cazenave, a former senior exec­ut­ive in the French state rail­way who took over at Eurostar in Octo­ber.

The ser­vice reg­u­larly runs 14 daily trains between Paris and Lon­don com­pared with 18 or more in 2019.

Eurostar has oper­ated more trains dur­ing very busy peri­ods but said that there are not enough bor­der resources to return per­man­ently to pre-pan­demic sched­ules.

Eurostar has added more staff, and a different French pass­port con­trol booth has been installed in Lon­don. But the num­ber of people who can flow through the bor­der is con­strained by the tight space of the inter­na­tional ter­min­als at its sta­tions.

While the ser­vice struggles with con­straints, air­lines are cap­it­al­ising on demand. Europe’s most giant car­rier, Ryanair, plans to run a record num­ber of flights this sum­mer. «We can­not talk about growth if we cannot cross the bor­der correctly. It should be solved; it has to be,» she said.

Cazenave is con­fid­ent of find­ing solu­tions, includ­ing per­suad­ing bor­der author­it­ies to add more staff.

«We will find a way because every­one is very motiv­ated and is aware of the key role Eurostar plays in the mobil­ity between the UK and main­land Europe».

www.sba.tax

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Comments

  1. Jonathan25 January 2023 at 11:57

    Brexit problems, again?! It seems to me that we got the short end of the stick, haven't we? I can't remember many benefits that arise from Brexit but there sure are a lot of problems because of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Flavia25 January 2023 at 12:28

    Adding more staff to the border should be a priority. And it should be done right away. This is hurting a lot of companies and people.

    ReplyDelete

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