8 hours (door-to-door) for me to get from my home (30 miles south west of London) to Amsterdam by UK rail and Eurostar this week… It was even longer on the way back. The same journey would be HALF that time by air!
The crying shame is that the overall journey could be a far more acceptable 6 hours, IF Eurostar would reopen its terminal at Ebbsfleet - enabling millions of travellers around the M25 to avoid travelling into Central London, and all the time and hassle involved with that.
Eurostar shut its Ebbsfleet and Ashtead stations on the high speed line during Covid and reportedly have no plans to reopen them for at least another two years. A decision driven more by cost saving and Eurostar PROFIT than by ENVIRONMENTAL considerations.
It is cheaper for Eurostar to run everything through London St Pancras - than offer an environmentally better option which would attract more travellers away from flying. So where is the UK Government in all this? Happy to let it happen so that it also doesn’t have to reopen its Border Control offices?
Personally, I will continue to travel by train to Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, but I am sure there are many business travellers living in the home-counties around London who will not. I could almost have got from home to New York in the time it took me to get from home to Amsterdam!
Come on Eurostar, get the stations open again and invest in a more sustainable travel experience which people will WANT to use.