Ian F.

"David Horne, _the_ chancellor of the royal duchy of city south and
deansgate" <[email protected]> wrote in message

    > Not a big deal though. The Eurostar won't be attractive to people
    > further away (other than enthusiasts) unless they markedly reduce the
    > price of travelling _to_ London for a Eurostar trip.

Excellent point. But surely train travel to London will never be truly
"cheap"?

Ian

David Horne

Ian F. <[email protected]> wrote:

    > "David Horne, _the_ chancellor of the royal duchy of city south and
    > deansgate" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >
    > > Not a big deal though. The Eurostar won't be attractive to people
    > > further away (other than enthusiasts) unless they markedly reduce the
    > > price of travelling _to_ London for a Eurostar trip.
    >
    > Excellent point. But surely train travel to London will never be truly
    > "cheap"?

Train travel to London can be fast and cheap when booked in advance- it
used to be possible to buy combined tickets from, say, Manchester to
Paris which were reasonable. I don't know if they still exist though.

--
David Horne- http://www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk
http://www.davidhorne.net/pictures.html http://soundjunction.org

Richard J.

Ian F. wrote:
    > "David Horne, _the_ chancellor of the royal duchy of city south and
    > deansgate" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >> And not everyone travelling between London and Paris lives near
    >> one of those destinations. I'm off to Paris on Friday (hi Magda!)
    >> and wouldn't have considered the train, either for cost or time.
    >> (I'm in Manchester, but flying from Liverpool on Easyjet.)
    > There's no doubt that the train does save time if you live in the
    > south. It takes me 30 minutes to Waterloo rather than almost an
    > hour to Gatwick, longer to Gatwick - and just forget Luton and
    > Stansted - plus all the hanging around at airports both ends and
    > then getting from CDG to my clients' office.
    > The same won't be true when E* moves to St. Pancras though - it'll
    > add another 20 minutes to the journey.

20 minutes more to get to St Pancras, but the E* journey will be 20
minutes shorter, so overall there will be no difference in time (and
reliability of E* in the London area should be better).
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, change 'ten' to 'net' in address)
www.stayparis.net

Dave

"Tony Polson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > "Harry" <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>The "Chunnel" hasn't put the channel ferries or Ryanair out of business
    >>has it?
    > Exactly. The ferries are transporting a record number of vehicles.
    > Meanwhile, Eurostar claims it has something like 70% of the
    > London-Paris and London-Brussels passenger market, yet Eurostar
    > traffic is running at only **one third** of its projections.
    > I wonder where the other two thirds would have come from. <g>

You are muddling Eurostar and Eurotunnel traffic.

Eurostar competes with the airlines, does pretty well at it on the chosen
routes and is poised to turn a profit. If they had been allowed to start on
some of the other routes such as Birmingham or Leeds, then I'm sure they
could also have eaten into those markets. But the projections you talk about
date from a time when no one had heard of Stelios, so the idea of people
chugging all the way to London from Glasgow just to get to Paris, rather
than pay through the nose for a British Airways fare, was still valid. There
may have been other optimistic factors such as a hope the CTRL would be in
place quicker, possibly having Britain in the Schengen area and generally
more cross settlement between the 3 countries. Nevertheless Eurostar still
believe they can take 50% market share even on 4.5 hour routes; hopefully
they will get a chance to test that after next year.

Eurotunnel on the other hand is a complete balls up. For years they have had
expensive and inflexible fares that meant when I wanted to take the car
across 18 months ago, it was double what Hoverspeed were asking. No matter
how much my desire to support them, I wasn't going to pay out �100 more just
for that reason. When they finally adopted a similar pricing model to
everyone else shortly afterwards, their marketing of it was pathetic. When
we went on a group trip this summer (some 12 months after the change), the
organiser didn't even consider the tunnel, assuming it would be too
expensive because he had heard no different. In fact they were only �4 more
expensive than our best deal but also on a more convenient route. So, while
the idea of the tunnel has forged ties with mainland Europe and helped grow
the market, its execution has played right into the hands of the ferries.

Dave

Tony Polson

[email protected] (David Horne, _the_ chancellor of
the royal duchy of city south and deansgate) wrote:
    >Not a big deal though.

Actually, it is a big deal, because the move to St Pancras will deter
a lot of people who found Waterloo extremely convenient but who will
not wish to endure the trek to St Pancras. It may result in a loss of
passengers unless those gained from the north of London market exceed
those lost from Waterloo.

    >The Eurostar won't be attractive to people
    >further away (other than enthusiasts) unless they markedly reduce the
    >price of travelling _to_ London for a Eurostar trip.

That's true. The Eurostar fares are actually quite reasonable
compared to the rip-off fares to/from London charged by British
domestic TOCs, notably Virgin.

Tony Polson

"Richard J." <[email protected]> wrote:
    >20 minutes more to get to St Pancras, but the E* journey will be 20
    >minutes shorter, so overall there will be no difference in time (and
    >reliability of E* in the London area should be better).


But the extra 20 minutes' journey to St Pancras will involve the
Northern Line. Compared to the easy interchange at Waterloo, the
addition of an unpleasant Tube journey will put many people off.

Tony Polson

"Dave" <[email protected]> wrote:
    >You are muddling Eurostar and Eurotunnel traffic.


No, I am not. Eurostar claims to have 70% of the London/Paris and
Brussels markets, and British Airways agrees.

So with 70% of the market, Eurostar is still carrying only a third of
its projected traffic. There is only one possible conclusion to be
drawn; the projections were pure fantasy.

And that's something that Eurostar and Eurotunnel have in common. They
both told a pack of lies to get their pet projects financed and built,
then failed to deliver more than a third of the forecast traffic.
Cross Channel rail freight is even worse, running at less than a fifth
of forecasts - there is actually less freight traffic now than before
the Tunnel was built, when it was carried on train ferries.

So Eurotunnel went bust and is now in bankruptcy protection.

Meanwhile, Eurostar is still losing money (it has never made a penny
profit, despite winning 70% of its market) and London and Continental
Railways haven't a cat's chance in hell of ever paying off the large
debt of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. So the Treasury guarantees will
be called in, and the taxpayer will have to stump up.

Richard J.

Tony Polson wrote:
    > "Richard J." <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> 20 minutes more to get to St Pancras, but the E* journey will be 20
    >> minutes shorter, so overall there will be no difference in time
    >> (and reliability of E* in the London area should be better).
    > But the extra 20 minutes' journey to St Pancras will involve the
    > Northern Line.

Not necessarily. Bakerloo to Oxford Circus, with level interchange to
the Victoria Line is an easier and probably quicker route.

    > Compared to the easy interchange at Waterloo, the
    > addition of an unpleasant Tube journey will put many people off.

You mean they won't go to Paris at all, or they'll put up with an even
more unpleasant journey by air? Neither seems likely. Basically the
journey will be less convenient for some and more convenient for others.
Some who currently get a train to Waterloo may be able to use other
routes entirely, such as Thameslink direct to St Pancras.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Runge

Oh thank you thank you for opening our eyes and helping us read the news !!

<[email protected]> a �crit dans le message de news:
[email protected]. com...
The Times (UK)
September 20, 2006

Train that changed a nation celebrates its 25th anniversary
    >From Charles Bremner in Paris

THE final joint will be welded in a new high-speed rail line between
Paris and Germany today as France celebrates the 25th anniversary of a
train that has shrunk the map and transformed the life of the country.

Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, is officiating at the
ceremony at Chauconin-Neufmontiers, which finishes the �2 billion
route of the TGV-Est, the eastern train � grande vitesse. Trains
running at up to 200mph (320km/h) will put Rheims within a 45-minute
commute from Paris and bring Strasbourg within 2 hours 20 minutes
instead of 4 hours.

The imminent arrival of the link has boosted property prices along its
stops. It is likely to knock out airline services between Paris and
Strasbourg and Metz, in the same way as it has taken most of the
traffic between Marseilles, London and Brussels. The completion of the
eastern line, which crosses the vineyards of Champagne, has been timed
to coincide with festivities for the quarter century since the late
President Mitterrand opened the first TGV, between Paris and Lyons, on
September 22, 1981. A show with two full-scale mock-ups of the sleek
blue and white trains opens by the Eiffel Tower at the weekend.

While France is beset by gloom and economic uncertainty, the TGV is
being celebrated as a triumph of Gallic vision, with no match except
for Japan's older and less flexible network of Shinkansen.

"The legend goes on," said Guillaume Pepy, the deputy chief of SNCF,
the state railway, as politicians crowded in to share the credit. In
another anniversary act, SNCF tested TGV trains at 225mph on the
Mediterranean line on Monday with a view to raising their cruising
speed. (The fastest British trains do not exceed 125mph). The
1,250-mile (2,010km) TGV network, a product of the French tradition of
centralised power and state engineering, has transformed life, bringing
cities such as Tours, 230 miles from Paris, within commuting range. A
daily season ticket on that TGV route costs �390 a month. Between
Paris and Lille (127 miles each way), daily commuting costs �415 a
month. Vend�me, 260 miles to the southwest of the capital, has become
a dormitory town. About 400,000 people use the TGV for daily work.

The TGV project, which was launched by the late President Pompidou in
1974, has brought northern prosperity to the Mediterranean and Atlantic
regions as well as opening them to weekend tourism from Paris. The
opening of the service to Avignon and Aix-en-Provence in 2001 brought a
flood of second-homebuyers into Provence, now under three hours from
the capital.

"The TGV is the Concorde plus commercial success," Clive Lamming, a
railway historian who wrote the Larousse des trains et des chemins de
fer encyclopaedia, told The Times. "The TGV has virtually reduced
France to one big suburb. This has increased the independence of
businesses from Paris. Workers are more mobile and their costs are
less."

The TGV runs on separate high-speed lines that keep it away from the
mixed traffic on which fast trains in Britain and elsewhere operate.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...366229,00.html

Gregory Morrow

gRunge wrote:

    > Oh thank you thank you for opening our eyes and helping us read the news !!


If I take the train to Paris can I screw Magda...???

--
Best
Greg

    > <[email protected]> a �crit dans le message de news:
    > [email protected]. com...
    > The Times (UK)
    > September 20, 2006
    > Train that changed a nation celebrates its 25th anniversary
    > >From Charles Bremner in Paris

Martin

On 20 Sep 2006 22:20:24 -0700, "Gregory Morrow"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >gRunge wrote:
    >> Oh thank you thank you for opening our eyes and helping us read the news !!
    >If I take the train to Paris can I screw Magda...???

Did you mean gRunge?
--

Martin

nospamplease

"Harry" <[email protected]> writes:

    > The "Chunnel" hasn't put the channel ferries or Ryanair out of business
    > has it?

Ryanair no longer flies between (what it calls) London and Paris, so
I'd say on this particular route the train has certainly put Ryanair
out of business.
--

-- Chris.

Jim Ley

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 01:12:19 GMT, "Richard J."
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >Tony Polson wrote:
    >> "Richard J." <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>> 20 minutes more to get to St Pancras, but the E* journey will be 20
    >>> minutes shorter, so overall there will be no difference in time
    >>> (and reliability of E* in the London area should be better).
    >> But the extra 20 minutes' journey to St Pancras will involve the
    >> Northern Line.
    >Not necessarily. Bakerloo to Oxford Circus, with level interchange to
    >the Victoria Line is an easier and probably quicker route.
    >> Compared to the easy interchange at Waterloo, the
    >> addition of an unpleasant Tube journey will put many people off.
    >You mean they won't go to Paris at all, or they'll put up with an even
    >more unpleasant journey by air?

I think you have a very different view of the undergroung and of
flying to me - the underground is something never to enter, especially
during the summer months or if you have luggage, a bus or drive to
heathrow or gatwick sit around with a beer catching up on some email
and a short ride in a plane. Is much more prefable to a hellish
ungerground and a train where I can't catch up on email.

Jim.

Dave Spencer

In message <[email protected]>, Tony Polson
<[email protected]> writes
    >"Miss L. Toe" <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>It put the hovercraft out of business,
    >Nonsense. The hovercraft were put out of business by the high speed
    >catamaran ferries, plus the fact that they were life expired, noisy,
    >uncomfortable and exceptionally expensive to operate because of their
    >extremely high fuel consumption.
    >>and has caused lots of problems for
    >>the ferries.
    >More nonsense! The ferries are carrying more traffic than ever.
According to the report of the Centre for European, Regional and
Transport Economics of the University of Kent at

http://tinyurl.com/hq8zz

passenger numbers through Kent ports declined from just under 25m in
1997 to around 17m in 2002.

Freight carryings through the Port of Calais overcame disruption in
the early part of the year to recover from June and for the rest of
2005.
But throughout the year, passengers using Europe's busiest ferry port,
continued to fall.

And from

http://www.aferry.to/news/viewpost.asp?news=59

(a propos Calais traffic in 2005)

"The general decline over recent years in passengers travelling between
the UK and mainland Europe was underlined, with fewer British day
trippers visiting Calais. Passenger numbers fell to 11,695,133, an
overall reduction of 11.8 per cent compared with 2004.

On the other hand, cross-Channel freight traffic increased by 1.56 per
cent to a total of 1,651,737 trucks and there was an increase of 2.3 per
cent in tonnage handled through the commercial port. This was a good
result in the light of the three month disruption from February until
June in the Port. It also follows on from an exceptional year in 2004,
when traffic grew by 12.6 per cent.

In terms of total tonnage handled by the Port of Calais, this also
improved to a total of 38.3 million tons, confirming Calais' position as
the 4th busiest French port behind Marseille, Le Havre and Dunkerque and
ahead of Nantes-St Nazaire, Rouen and Bordeaux."

And in case you're wondering what happened in 2003, from the Port of
Calais at

http://www.calais-port.com/communiqu...lan2003uk.html

"While tourist vehicles and freight traffic using the Port of Calais
remained static, a big drop in coach business led to passenger numbers
falling by 8.5 per cent to 13.7 million in 2003."
--
Dave Spencer

Dave Spencer

In message <[email protected]>, Dave Spencer
<[email protected]> writes
[snip]
    >Freight carryings through the Port of Calais overcame disruption in
    >the early part of the year to recover from June and for the rest of
    >2005.
    >But throughout the year, passengers using Europe's busiest ferry port,
    >continued to fall.
[snip]

Sorry all, this quote belonged in the 'Calais 2005' bit not the
University of Kent bit. Fngier troulbe again :-(

D
--
Dave Spencer