AT LAST – SOME GOOD NEWS – PLANS BEGIN FOR MORE SPACE IN THE INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES AREA AT LONDON ST PANCRAS.

Late last year we heard that capacity for passengers departing from the station could be increased. HS1 announced that “a modest amount of new infrastructure would ‘unlock’ most of the constraints currently hampering growth” at St Pancras. Then, back in January HS1(The owners of St Pancras Station and the High-speed line to the Channel Tunnel) announced that they were recruiting a design team for this work. They have now re-named themselves as “London St Pancras Highspeed (LSPH)”. See here from the Architects Journal for further details about setting up the design team: –https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/competitions/competition-launched-for-st-pancras-reconfiguration Last week we heard that LSPH and Getlink (The owners of the Channel Tunnel) have made an agreement to facilitate the expansion of passenger traffic along HS1

WITH 2 RECENT MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES, BOTH HS1 AND EUROSTAR NEED BETTER CONTINGENCY PLANS

At the end of the 2023 Xmas & New Year holiday period, the Eurostar service to and from London St Pancras was cancelled for the best part of a day. These incidents both occurred during the busiest time of year: – one just before the Xmas holiday and the other just before the New Year Holiday. Several thousand people were left stranded and had their holiday travel plans ruined. In both cases, we have to ask – are Eurostar maintaining their trains in a good condition and are HS1 looking after the infrastructure? We also have to ask them both why it took so long to get services back to normal and rescue passengers from a stranded train? One morning,

RECENT OPINION POLL CONFIRMS PREFERENCE FOR RAIL

HS1 Ltd who are the owners of the High Speed Rail Link from London to the Channel Tunnel recently conducted market research into how business people would prefer to travel to and from key European destinations. Their research concluded that an overwhelming majority of around 80 % would consider travel by train if a suitably attractive offer was available compared to air. They also concluded that people wanted to take the train to a greater range of destinations than are possible at the moment, whether for leisure or business purposes. Bordeaux, Frankfurt and Prague were suggested as destinations that can be easily reached from London using HS1 and the High Speed Network across Europe. For further information see a recent