Our Campaign

WHO WE ARE

My name is Edith Robson, I’m a retired teacher who lives in Ashford and I use Eurostar regularly to see my husband who works in Brussels. In January 2007, I started a petition to call on Eurostar to reverse their decision to end Ashford to Brussels services. This petition has received the full support of regular Eurostar passengers and I, together with the regular passengers, have now decided to take the campaign online.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

1. What is Eurostar proposing for Ashford International?

On 19th November 2007, Eurostar will cut most of its train services out of Ashford International, a 10-year old, multi-million pound station. All weekday services to Brussels will be scrapped and, for other destinations, a skeleton service will remain: services to Lille will go down to one from five a day and services to Paris will be reduced from seven to three a day.

2. How does Eurostar justify these changes?

Eurostar says it is making the changes because it will offer passengers a more convenient station, Ebbsfleet International, some 35 miles away, on the outskirts of London and next to the M25, the London orbital motorway.

Eurostar claims that detailed research shows that the new station will serve an area of 10 million people and it will be more convenient for up to 2/3 of Ashford passengers. It says its proposed residual stops at Ashford reflect the expected level of demand for Ashford. Passengers who wish to travel from Ashford to Brussels will still be able to take the Disney train and change at Lille. In total, Eurostar says it will now be offering 45% more services to Kent.

3. So, if it’s such good news for passengers, what possible reason can there be for opposing Eurostar’s proposals?

Unfortunately, we don’t believe that the proposed changes are such good news for passengers. This is because:

We have serious doubts over the research used to justify the changes

• In our discussions with other passengers, we are still unable to find a sizable minority -let alone the 2/3 of passengers that Eurostar suggest - who would prefer to travel from Ebbsfleet.
• 6 months after stating that their proposals for Ashford were based on detailed research, Eurostar admitted in a Belgian magazine that the 2/3 claim was not based on interviews with real passengers. Instead, it was simply an extrapolation from their customer database.
• If the research failed to take into account the views of passengers, what other important oversights might there be? Could the research have taken into account real travel decision-making factors, such as time of day of travel or direction of travel? This sort of information is probably rather difficult to draw out of a database but is absolutely vital for an accurate picture of the true markets for Ashford and Ebbsfleet.
• A number of passengers who have booked tickets over the internet have told us that their tickets showed London Waterloo and not Ashford as the departure point. We are concerned, therefore, with tickets booked through the internet on the increase, that there could be Ashford passengers that are not showing up in Eurostar’s statistics.
• The 10 million people Eurostar claims as Ebbsfleet’s catchment area - bigger even than Greater London - concerns us as we believe Eurostar is including in this figure both Ashford’s catchment area and part of London St Pancras’s future catchment area.

We believe the proposed changes do not reflect the future demand for services to Brussels from Ashford.

• Passenger numbers obviously vary depending on the time of day and the two, current, morning services from Ashford to Brussels and Lille seem particularly popular. We have regularly observed around 100 people getting on each of these trains.
• If our conclusions from our discussions with our fellow passengers are correct, then a sizeable demand will still remain for these trains, even when Ebbsfleet is open.

For many passengers, their journey times will increase, not decrease, if they have to drive to Ebbsfleet

• We believe the reason that many people choose to travel by Eurostar from Ashford because it provides a convenient location, away from the congested London area and in the same direction of travel as their final destination.
• Ebbsfleet, on the other hand, located near the Dartford Tunnel, will mean for many a longer time in the car as they drive into a notoriously congested section of the UK’s road network.
• With ongoing roadworks in the next two years on the two main approach roads (M25, A2), journey times to the station may become unbearable during rush hour, the very time that business people need the service most.

For passengers who travel to Ashford by public transport, most will not be able to get to Ebbsfleet at all before 2009!

• Ashford is railway junction with 5 lines radiating out through Kent and the south coast. Ebbsfleet, on the other hand, has no domestic rail connections until 2009.
• If Eurostar’s plans go ahead, passengers for Brussels will be forced to travel to St Pancras, increasing the cost and time of their journey substantially.
• Even when Ebbsfleet receives high-speed domestic rail services in 2009, it will still not offer the same breadth of connections that Ashford does.
• In 2009, passengers who have to travel by domestic train to get to Ebbsfleet could be forgiven a sense of irony: the domestic train journey will first take them from Ashford to Ebbsfleet. Once at Ebbsfleet, though, Eurostar will take them back past Ashford International, allowing them to pay for the high-speed line a second time.

We believe the proposed cuts at Ashford undermine Eurostar’s environmental credentials

• Eurostar recently launched an initiative to become “carbon-neutral” and it sees itself as the choice of travel to the continent for those who care about the environment. It is a pity, therefore, that Eurostar’s proposed changes at Ashford may well increase the personal carbon footprint of Ashford passengers: Ebbsfleet, unlike Ashford, has no domestic rail connection so this means car is the only option for most people to get there; once in the car, if the journey is longer or congested, this will mean higher fuel consumption and thus greater CO2 emissions.

We fear that Eurostar’s proposed cuts could be the first step towards the closure of Ashford International

• When a business tests a new product on the market, it usually carries out a trial before going into full-scale production. The scrapping of all Ashford services to Brussels, however, offers no chance to test the market once Ebbsfleet is open.
• The scale of cuts at Ashford will make it difficult for some shops and cafés to continue trading, thus further undermining the attractiveness of the station.
• Once high-speed domestic services are in service, we expect Eurostar to review its operations further. We believe the case for saving the few services remaining in 2009 will be even more difficult if we do not take a firm stand now.

4. What are you campaigning for?

We accept that the opening of Ebbsfleet means there will have to be some changes. However, we believe Eurostar have got their proposals for Ashford badly wrong and, by failing to listen to their passengers, are in the process of damaging their reputation. We are therefore calling on Eurostar, while there is still time, to re-think their proposals in the following ways:

• Eurostar should maintain direct services to Brussels from Ashford once Ebbsfleet opens.
• In the few months between now and the opening of Ebbsfleet, Eurostar should carry out extensive work with passengers to calculate the level of service required at Ashford to best meet needs.
• Ashford should retain its current mix of destinations (Brussels, Paris, EuroDisney, Avignon, Bourg St Maurice etc) once Ebbsfleet opens and Eurostar should provide a firm commitment to this.

5. Who is backing your campaign?

Regular passengers and citizens are at the heart of our campaign. By April, over 8,000 people had signed our petition to save Eurostar services to Ashford International and, at time of writing, (May 2007), this has now shot up to 10,000 people.

Support for Ashford has also been provided from right across the community, business and political spectrums: business and community leaders from Kent and the south east, local councillors from Kent and beyond, MPs, Euro MPs and members of the House of Lords are all backing the campaign. To get a better idea of who some of these people are, you can see the letter some of them signed jointly to the Telegraph back in April.

6. What happens next?

We will continue to make the case for Ashford at every opportunity and we urge you to support us. With the launch of our campaign website, we will also be taking a closer look at Eurostar to find out more about the company, to try to work out why they are so unwilling to listen to their passengers and to encourage them to think again. We will share any information we find with you via this website.

7. How can I get involved in the campaign?

You can help us in many ways:

• Keep an eye on the website and let other passengers know about the site
• If you have any thoughts based on your own experience of Eurostar, if you will be affected by the changes, if you think there is something we should know, you can contact us, using the form on the contact page on this website. We would be pleased to hear from you.
• You can either sign our petition online or can download a copy and collect signatures. Copies to download are available on the Railfuture website
• You can also sign the separate petition on the 10 Downing St website
• 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: www.writetothem.com
• You can tell people about the proposed changes at Ashford: we believe many travellers are still unaware of what will happen in November 2007