December 14th - Eurotunnel's vow for 2030
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cologne, Frankfurt, and Geneva should appear on the train departure screens from London by 2030, the boss of Eurotunnel has vowed.
Yann Leriche, chief executive of the tunnel firm’s parent, Getlink, says he expects new entrants to start competing with Eurostar – and to double the number of direct rail routes from the UK.
Eurotunnel is the infrastructure operator between Folkestone and Calais. It currently runs the LeShuttle car-carrying operation as well as trains carrying trucks. Freight trains and Eurostar passengers expresses pay for the right to run through the tunnel. Eurotunnel collects €20 (£17) for each passenger on Eurostar trains.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, in a slightly unusual position today. |
| 0:09.4 | I am in the freight drivers section of a Euro Tunnel Freight Shuttle, shortly to be departing from Calais to Fkston. Now I must reveal that I am not |
| 0:24.8 | technically a truck driver. I can drive a car but very badly. The reason I'm here is because |
| 0:31.7 | this is the end of an illuminating visit to Calais for the Euro Tunnel preparations of their 30th anniversary. |
| 0:41.9 | It was the 6th of May, 1994 that the Channel Tunnel was commissioned, opened by President Francois Mitterrand |
| 0:51.6 | and Her Majesty the Queen. |
| 0:59.1 | Quite a day and who would imagine that 30 years later, |
| 1:05.3 | well, we would still be using the Channel Tunnel not to full capacity. |
| 1:08.1 | And that's really the story of today. |
| 1:15.1 | Basically, there is plenty of room for new passenger trains in the Channel tunnel. At the moment, there's an average of two an hour running from London-Supacris International |
| 1:22.1 | to Paris through to Brussels, some of those continuing to Amsterdam. They're all run by Euro Star, which has been running the passenger carrying operation |
| 1:34.3 | exclusively since November 1994. |
| 1:39.3 | Now, the Euro Tunnel revenue model requires train companies to pay 20 euros per passenger. |
| 1:49.1 | So guess what? |
| 1:50.3 | They want to have a lot more passengers and a lot more trains. |
| 1:55.1 | And Jan Lerich, who's the chief executive of Euro Tunnel, has been talking about what he anticipates and it's a really |
| 2:04.5 | interesting plan. They say we have done all the work necessary to get new entrants. They want |
| 2:13.2 | to have trains running from London St. Pancras International to Cologne to Frankfurt and to Geneva |
| 2:20.3 | by 2030. That will double the number of trains that are currently, or the new number of destinations, |
| 2:29.3 | at least, that are currently on offer. Might be, of course, that if you're getting a new entrant, they might think, well, we're |
| 2:36.0 | just going to go to Paris because we know loads of people want to go there and they're paying |
| 2:39.6 | a fortune to Euro star. |
... |
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