UK News
London's New Eurostar Glitter Masks Low-Speed Commuter Misery
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Nov 14, 2007, 03:33

 A Bloomberg story by Tracy Alloway at www.bloomberg.com

London - Sarah Chapman isn't impressed by the restored gothic façade of St. Pancras International train station in north London.

``It won't be helping me,'' said Chapman, 36, who travels to London about twice a week from her home in Luton, north of the capital. ``I'll still be slogging away, struggling to find a seat in the mornings, and there'll still be delays whenever there's a bit of snow or a leaf blows onto the tracks.''

The terminal, with its 186-mph rail link to France, opens today, reviving a Victorian-era landmark once slated for destruction. While the 5.8 billion-pound ($12 billion) line will cut the Eurostar journey to Paris by 20 minutes, domestic travelers still face being sardined into carriages meandering across the country on low-speed tracks.

Commuters ``seem to have been treated very much as second- class citizens in the planning of the whole enterprise,'' said Paul Herrington, a 68-year-old economist who has been traveling to St. Pancras from Leicester for 30 years.

The government and a group of private rail companies spent about 800 million pounds to refurbish St. Pancras, the terminus for Eurostar trains previously operated out of Waterloo station.

Visitors to the 139-year-old station will be able to slurp oysters at Europe's longest champagne bar, shop at a farmer's market or have a pint at a gastropub, in addition to catching a train that will take them to Paris in 2 hours and 15 minutes.

The terminal stands in contrast to the majority of the U.K.'s 2,500 rail stations, two-thirds of which don't have toilets or waiting areas, according to the National Audit Office.

Commuter Demand

Demand for rail travel has grown faster than capacity over the past decade, and passenger figures are the highest in 60 years, according to the government. It predicts numbers will increase by an additional 30 percent in the next decade.

Commuters made 316 million rail trips in and out of London last year, compared with the 7.85 million Eurostar journeys.

The government says it is working on improving domestic railways, including an upgrade of the West Coast Main Line from London to Glasgow. The 8.6 billion-pound project has cut travel times, though Virgin Rail Group Ltd. still can't run its trains at their top speed of 140 mph.

``Our priority is tackling overcrowding and increasing capacity to meet future demand,'' the Department for Transport said in an e-mailed statement.

While Britain has no plans to build another high-speed line for at least seven years, it will add 1,300 train carriages and expand Thameslink services connecting north and south London. Crossrail, a 16 billion-pound project to link Heathrow airport with east and west London, was approved last month after 18 years of political wrangling.

From December 2009, the new Eurostar line will also be used for 140-mph services to London from the county of Kent, southeast of the capital, with seats for 10,440 commuters.

`National Prestige'

The government in 1996 agreed to invest 2 billion pounds in the new high-speed link, with the rest coming from London & Continental Railways Ltd., which planned to borrow money secured by future Eurostar revenue. When sales came in below forecasts, the government guaranteed 3.75 billion pounds of debt, citing regeneration benefits and ``national prestige.''

Last year the National Audit Office, which monitors government spending, said the project wasn't justified on passenger traffic alone.

The new link and revamped station have brought 10.5 billion pounds of investment to the King's Cross area of London and Kent, according to London & Continental.

``If our only goal was to get people to Paris quicker, we would have quite a few questions to answer,'' said Ben Ruse, a spokesman for the company.

`Close to Capacity'

Still, the rebirth of the once-blighted neighborhood won't do much for commuters heading in and out of the city each day.

``The trains are running so close to capacity that when one breaks down during rush hour the remaining services are so over- crowded I've seen people faint,'' said David Offer, a 35-year-old geologist who travels from St. Albans, a commuter town north of London, to Farringdon every day.

In the early 1990s, the government turned operation of rail services over to private operators, with the tracks controlled by a state-backed company.

Since then, passenger numbers have soared by about 40 percent, along with ticket prices and delays. Last year, train fares rose 6.8 percent, the most in 10 years, while customer satisfaction dropped 2 percentage points to 79 percent, the Office of Rail Regulation said in July.

Successive U.K. governments have blamed each other for underinvestment. While France laid new tracks for high-speed services in the 1970s, Britain chose to develop a tilting train, designed to quickly navigate curves.

The project was abandoned in the 1980s, leaving England with trains that, until today, ran at a maximum speed of 125 mph.

``We probably should have gone down the high-speed route in the '60s or '70s,'' said Christian Wolmar, the author of five books on Britain's railways. ``Whether one can now play catch-up, I'm pretty skeptical.''