25 years of Eurostar: into the chaos with high speed

Around 700 passengers were on board, this morning 25 years ago. On November 14, 1994, the first Eurostar left London with the destination Paris.

"From Waterloo station, it started on time," remembers the former conductor Bob Priston in the British newspaper "Guardian". "In northern France, we accelerated to 300 km / h, we were aware that it was a historic moment." Nothing was allowed to go wrong. After a three-hour drive, the Eurostar reached the Gare du Nord station in Paris.

The most famous and popular route is probably Paris-London, but by no means the only one. The Eurostar started operation just a few months after the opening of the Eurotunnel.

The 37-kilometer tunnel under the English Channel is not only the world's longest underwater tunnel, but also Britain's direct link to Europe. For travelers, it offers an alternative to the plane. And many areas have revived a stop of the express train - because the Eurostar stops not only in the metropolises.

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At that time, the train sneaked through southern England until it disappeared into the Eurotunnel near Folkestone. Only in 2007, the high-speed line High Speed ​​1 on the British side was completely expanded and reduced the travel time to now two hours and 15 minutes from London to Paris. That's about an hour less than at the beginning. In 2018, 22 million passengers traveled through the Eurotunnel; of which about 11 million with the Eurostar.

"For the German market, the train is not so important," says tourism expert Torsten Kirstges. He is Professor of Tourism Management at the Jade University of Applied Sciences in Wilhelmshaven. This is mainly because it is not very practical from Germany to drive via France to London.

That the Eurostar is not necessarily designed for German travelers, already show the website. You can call them in different languages ​​- English, French, Dutch. German is not present. And also comparatively few Eurostar trips begin or end in Germany, as emerges from a report of the auditors of Ernst & Young.

Passport control at Eurostar check-in

Once you dreamed of ICE connections to London - but it has not come to this day. Although an ICE completed a test drive through the tunnel in 2010, commercial traffic was never recorded.

Direct connections to London from Frankfurt or Cologne - is that coming sometime? The outlook of Deutsche Bahn is more than restrained. Basically, that's of interest, the company said. However, not all trains and routes are equipped with an appropriate train protection system, but this depends on the approval of the ICE trains. Details on the schedule could not be called.

But why take the train when you can fly from Paris to London in just over an hour? "The train alone is a great time saver, because you arrive directly in the metropolises and not at an airport outside," says expert Kirstges.

Check-in and passport control - but really does not fall off the Eurostar. If you take the train, you have to arrive earlier - between 45 and 60 minutes before it is recommended. Check-in at Paris Gare du Nord is known for long lines. Without identity card or passport, nothing works - Great Britain does not belong to the Schengen area. At least you can save the long way to the Paris airports.

Another advantage: The train is much more environmentally friendly than the aircraft. Instead of an environmental footprint of 64.2 kilograms of carbon dioxide for the flight from London to Paris, the train journey pollutes the environment with only 4.1 kilograms of CO2 per person, according to Eurostar. The situation is similar for the London-Brussels or London-Amsterdam routes.

Train instead of plane

French railways SNCF recently announced that it plans to merge its subsidiaries Eurostar and Thalys. Thalys connects France, Belgium, the Netherlands and North Rhine-Westphalia. By combining the networks even more people to change from the plane to the train.

Tourism expert Kirstges hopes that - irrespective of the tunnel - Europe's future will increasingly be put on the train. "Since the birthday of the Eurostar is also a food for thought - especially when flying on a short distance more and more come under fire."

Much has happened since the first Eurostars cruise. So the route network has been expanded, but also in terms of design is a lot different. The former conductor Tom Wolfe remembers the first uniforms in the "Guardian": They were designed by designer Pierre Balmain and were canary yellow. "Terrible!" He says.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Eurostar, the then creative director Christopher Jenner put on retro chic. The new London ticket office in St. Pancras combines Art Nouveau and Victorian Gothic and is intended to commemorate the "golden age of travel".

Chaos threatens a no-deal Brexit

The future now holds a great challenge - the Brexit. Should Britain leave the EU without a deal, the authors of a government report expect "chaos" at London's Eurostar terminal, the Financial Times reported.

In the worst case, up to 15,000 passengers a day would have to queue for one and a half kilometers. This would happen if France subjected British and non-EU travelers to strict passport controls. Maybe the number of business trips would also decrease. Currently, 60 percent of travelers travel weekdays on business.

But not only passenger trains, but also goods and car trains are rolling on the rails. In 2018, the Le Shuttle Auto Train transported 2.7 million vehicles, with 1.7 million trucks on lorry shuttles. Since the tunnel was opened, almost 410 million tons of goods have passed through the tube - most of them on truck shuttles. In Brexit without a contract, customs controls - and miles of traffic jams - are in danger.