If you ran a business and your customers, your fellow business leaders, local councillors, members of parliament and even Euro MPs said you were about to make a terrible mistake, you might listen to them, wouldn’t you? But not if you’re Eurostar, the international train operator. Welcome to the situation that many of Eurostar’s customers are facing today.
Save-Eurostar.org is the Eurostar passengers’ campaign website, dedicated to saving international trains from Ashford International. Over the coming weeks and months, you can help us save Eurostar from a decision that will undermine their existing customer base and their reputation. Please take a little time to explore our site, find out more on Eurostar’s proposals and why they should think again. If this gets you interested, why not join the thousands of people who are already supporting our campaign and help us to help Eurostar put their customers first again.
The origins of our campaign go back to September 2006 when Eurostar, the high-speed train company linking the UK with France and Belgium, announced it would slash train services from Ashford International, a multi-million pound station close to the Channel Tunnel in southern England, barely 10 years old. Services to Paris would drop from seven to three trains a day; services to Lille would become just one compared to five and, as for Brussels, there would be no more direct services at all. The reason given by Eurostar for these changes? It was opening a new station, Ebbsfleet, that detailed research had shown was more convenient to most current Ashford passengers.
As loyal passengers, many of us having relied on Eurostar for many years for our business and leisure travel, we would have loved to believe them. However, we couldn’t help having doubts in our mind. After all, if Eurostar had conducted detailed research, why could none of us remember having being consulted? If the new station was so much more convenient, why would we have to travel to the outskirts of London to get there, driving into a frequently-congested area and away from our direction of travel? For those of us without a car, how were we going to get to the new station? Ashford, after all offered train services throughout Kent and across the south coast but the new station could only offer local bus connections, at least until 2009.
With these doubts and worries, some of us began to take things further and wrote to Eurostar in the Autumn of 2006, asking them for more details and encouraging them to reconsider. But they could only write back to say they had complied months of research and this showed they were right and we were not; some of us wrote to Secretary of State for Transport but the replies we got from the Department for Transport told us it was a matter for Eurostar alone and there was nothing they could do.
By this point, although government and Eurostar were both seemingly unwilling to listen, three very significant developments started to occur: firstly, Ashford’s plight was gathering a growing amount of support from rail groups, businesses, local MPs and councils; secondly, towards the end of January 2007, we launched a petition; and thirdly, the Ashford story began to filter out from the local press and made it to the expatriate community in Belgium via a magazine called the Bulletin. This magazine extracted a confession from Eurostar that their research was not based on having consulted Ashford passengers, something we had long suspected. Within 2 months, the petition had grown to 8,000 signatures and on 3rd April, local MPs and councillors delivered a copy to Eurostar in London. Local TV, radio and the papers were all there and gave the story wide coverage.
Now, a company that cared about its customers and their business might have taken note of this petition. Eurostar’s reaction, on the other hand, was not particularly gracious: Eurostar’s Director of Communications, Simon Montague, crassly and incorrectly dismissed the petition as representing 0.01% of passengers; meanwhile, Eurostar’s Chief Executive, Richard Brown, started making unflattering comparisons between Ashford International and his new station, Ebbsfleet, during interviews; extraordinary behaviour by any standards from a Chief Executive.
It is now the end of May and, with 5 months to go until Eurostar’s proposed downgrading of Ashford, we, as passengers, are still not prepared to give up on Eurostar. We are convinced that there is a genuine case for a better level of service to be maintained at Ashford than that being proposed by Richard Brown. However, we are very concerned that Eurostar will not pay attention our concerns, a perplexing stance given the scale of support for Ashford. It is an attitude for which we have no explanation.
As a result, if Eurostar won’t take a closer interest in its Ashford passengers, we, on the other hand, will be taking a closer interest in their company to try and work out why they are so unwilling to engage in dialogue. Over the coming weeks and months, we will share any information with you via this website. We will also continue to put forward the case for Ashford at every opportunity and urge you to support us. You can help us in many ways:
- You can either sign our petition online or can download a copy and collect signatures
- You can sign the separate petition on the 10 Downing St website
- You can tell people about the proposed changes at Ashford: we believe many travellers are still unaware of what will happen in November 2007
- If you have any observations based on your own experience of Eurostar or if you think there is something we should know, you can contact us. We would be pleased to hear from you.
- You can write to Eurostar’s Chief Executive directly at richard.brown@eurostar.co.uk
- You can write to your local councillor, MP and express your concerns. You will find their details at: http://www.writetothem.com/
- Keep an eye on the website and let other passengers know about the site
The threat to Ashford International is serious and if Eurostar goes ahead as planned, it could be the first step towards the closure of all international services. With your support, however, we can save Eurostar and secure a viable future for Ashford. We will not be ignored.
Looking forward to working with you.
www.save-eurostar.org
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