Eurostar to Offer Scots Budget Link to Europe

By Douglas Friedli

EUROSTAR, the Channel Tunnel train operator, is to take on the budget airlines by offering low-cost direct tickets from Scotland to continental Europe.

Eurostar is in talks with train operators GNER and Virgin about offering through tickets from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen to Brussels and Paris. Return ticket prices would start at under GBP 100.

The train company expects a rapid rise in demand for tickets from Scotland to Europe in November when its new London terminus at St Pancras opens.

Simon Montague, Eurostar’s director of communications, said: “We are working towards an ability for people to buy through tickets. The tickets would be priced to be competitive with the airlines.”

Eurostar’s new terminus is within walking distance of Euston and King’s Cross stations, which serve Scotland, whereas its original home at Waterloo is a tube or taxi journey away. The company estimates that journey time for Scots travellers across London will be reduced by between 20 and 30 minutes and the journey to the continent will be 25 minutes faster thanks to the new high-speed line between London and the tunnel.

An estimated 35,000 passengers travel from Scotland to Europe and back using Eurostar, while a further 5,000 make the journey the other way round. Eurostar predicts those numbers will double over the next few years as St Pancras becomes better established.

The journey from Edinburgh to Paris or Brussels should take about seven hours, including enough time to change trains in London. While that is much longer than a flight, Eurostar can claim that it takes passengers from city centre to city centre.

Eurostar expects most of the additional business to come from holidaymakers, although it has seen an increase in sales to banks and other companies looking to reduce their carbon emissions for business travel.

The train from London to Paris burns around 10 per cent the amount of carbon per passenger as the equivalent aircraft. Business sales rose by 17 per cent in 2006.

Eurostar said it would not reintroduce direct trains between Scotland and the continent unless a high-speed line was built between London and Scotland. Direct trains ran for a short time in the 1990s but were killed off by budget air travel.

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