Demand for sustainable travel is ‘an exciting time’ for the high-speed train service, says CEO

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Eurostar has reported its busiest August ever, with more than a million passengers travelling on the cross-Channel train service in that month.

The service appears to have benefited from increasing demand for an alternative to flying - a trend highlighted in Eurostar’s advertising campaign.

Eurostar’s chief executive, Mike Cooper, said the growing demand for sustainable travel was “an exciting time” for the high-speed train service.

“We have seen positive momentum over the summer, with strong growth in the number of North American passengers choosing to travel by high-speed rail,” he said.

Airlines have contributed: the Dutch carrier KLM has called on its passengers to fly less. It will reduce the number of daily flights it operates between Amsterdam and Brussels from next March and offer customers a high-speed train seat instead.

Eurostar expects to start running direct Amsterdam-London trains in the coming months. While direct services run from London, UK-bound passengers from the Dutch city are currently obliged to change at Brussels because of border restrictions.

Ahead of Brexit, Cooper said that the train service was “in the best possible position we can be” to combat potential border issues but admitted there was “clearly an air of uncertainty”.

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Sales revenues at Eurostar grew 3% to £254m over the three months to the end of September, while passenger numbers were up 4% year on year to 3.1 million for the period.

Next month marks the 25th anniversary of Eurostar. The journey time from London to Paris has been reduced from three hours to 2hr 15min since the first journey on 14 November 1994, while passenger numbers have grown from fewer than three million in the first full year of service to 11 million last year.

Its French owner, SNCF, is considering merging Eurostar with the Franco-Belgian operator Thalys to create a European high-speed rail company, a project under the working name Green Speed, that would extend the network from London into Germany.