A passenger from Brussels writes;

“We are currently using Eurotunnel. Our son, however, came down from Nottingham to stay with us at Christmas, using Eurostar. He said ONE person got on the train at Ebbsfleet. Perhaps that is why they do not want to show their statistics”.

What a cheek!

January 21st

Today, I returned to Ashford from Brussels via Lille. 

The early train has a shorter waiting time in Lille and as you have to go through check-in and customs again you do at least have a warm Eurostar lounge to wait in on the return leg to the UK.

However, at the entrance to the scanner, there is a poster of a naked London Bobby about to run across a football field. This is obviously part of the French advertising campaign. Perhaps Eurostar board members do not realise just how continentals view their enforcers of law and order.  The police tend to be feared; despised and even hated thus this poster is exceedingly inappropriate.

The yob advert was deemed by the advertising standards agency in Brussels as being lacking in social responsibility and denigrating the British people.  It contravenes acts1, 4 &12 and Eurostar was asked to cease using it. Eurostar has apparently said that the campaign was over. However, the other ads are still up in the Eurostar lounge in Brussels where the naked man is still running around the revolving door.

A passenger’s view of the Euro Disney train
      
Quite apart from the difficulty in booking a seat on the very crowded Disneyland train, I have found myself sharing a table with a family of four (one under 3 years squeezing-in). As much as I like children, this is not fair on the family in question, neither is it fair on me having paid for a 1st class ticket. Invariably, many of the families on the train have already travelled long distances, they are tired and the children fractious.

As I travel so often, I have heard many complaints about the lack of Ashford stopping trains. Those who used to use Waterloo have no advantage from the 20 minute high speed saving and in many cases these passengers, quite apart from those of us living in the Southeast corner of England, would prefer to still use Ashford rather than transit across London by tube or taxi. It has been reported that the current services have severely inconvenienced 60% of Eurostar’s regular passengers and I have every reason to believe this. I used to look forward to my Eurostar journeys, now I dread them.

January 24th 2008

I am off to Brussels – once again on the Euro Disney train – to celebrate Burns night.  On the platform, I met some business people from Lille (whom I had already encountered on a previous visit).  They were once more bemoaning the loss of services from Ashford where they have a business.  They used to travel weekly but can no longer afford to do so as they cannot do a return journey on the same day. Having to pay for hotel accommodation as well as lose time in the home office means they come over only once a month.  There were three people so that was nine trips lost to Eurostar just this month.

Another passenger from Lille expresses continental woes as follows;

It seems to be impossible to get a return Lille-Ashford for less than 300 euros now and all the trains are booked up ages in advance. We are informed at Lille-Europe station that this is because so many people want to go to Ashford that there aren’t enough places on the very few trains that stop there. I have to go to Canterbury and back for work in March and am dreading it.
 
Also, one of my Canterbury colleagues who had to travel from Ebbsfleet recently complains that his trip took 3 hours longer, there was no proper food on sale at Ebbsfleet at the hour he was there and the security checks were so long they were ridiculous. All in all he never wants to go there again, but as he doesn’t drive, he has no choice.

February 4th - an Ashford commuter’s tale

Well, I’ve been using Ebbsfleet for over two months now and using various ways to get to and from, including public transport to get back home – near Canterbury. This takes me no less that 1.45hrs: wait for “fast track” bus to Gravesend station, get train to Chatham, change, get train to Faversham, wife picks up and drives home- adding at the very least 1.30hrs to my journey. Now it is worth thinking of flying.
 
Very few people get the bus (how long will that last?); which means that 98% use their car to get to Ebbsfleet. - wiping out any “tread lightly” nonsense.

I usually have to go back Sunday now with my wife driving me to Ebbsfleet. This takes about 35-40 minutes as generally there are no hold ups then - but a fair amount of fuel and double the time for my wife.  The train is not very busy Services: I give WH Smith and Cafe Nero a few months tops - there is no way they can be making a profit. On Sunday I saw the National coach pull up - nobody got on or off.
 
The staff are generally miserable and overmanned.

Ebbsfleet officially open.

Oh hurrah! 

The sign over the entrance says ‘Welcome to England’ but of course if you have arrived from the continent you will not see it as you will have your back to it as you leave.  Not that I think too many continental commuters can use it as they do not have a car waiting for them and I have never heard anyone over there give any indication that they know about the Fastrack or National Express bus services.

On the proposed Artwork

I am astounded.  Ebbsfleet is not an iconic building like St Pancras.  Why does it need to have a £2 + million sculpture?
 
I have heard that some staff are being made redundant.  How many jobs could £2m save?  Alternatively, it would pay for another two trains per day to stop at Ashford in each direction for a whole year.

I have received two suggestions for said sculpture – a huge sign saying ‘Ebbsfleet’ because drivers say it is badly signposted, or RB sitting on a potty.

The French still have one of the machines which bored the tunnel.  That reminds me of what a fantastic achievement that was.  My husband was there on the night of the breakthrough and one of his colleagues later did the tunnel walk.  I would love to see a huge train – Stevenson’s Rocket or a solar powered display of a train whizzing through the countryside or even an oasthouse.  We’ll probably end up with some painted bricks.

Kent on Sunday has a reader competition for ideas if you are interested.
 

I dared to drive to Bluewater.  I bought a pen in Eurostar colours for 25p.  The receipt, which was barely glanced at entitled me to claim 2 for 1 Eurostar travel.

The code word on my card from the Eurostar shop was – Ashford.  Was this just insensitive, nasty or intentionally hurtful? 

Having taken our Lille/Brussels trains as well as most of the Paris ones, and given them to Ebbsfleet, how dared they use Ashford as the code?  The cards available in other stores just said ‘Bluewater’.

It matters not that the small print says you must book a trip from Ebbsfleet or Ashford. We are losing the majority of our trains which are just being given to Ebbsfleet so why use ‘Ashford’ as the password.

The car journey was awful. I went from East Malling and the 20 miles took 45 mins going and 65 coming back – nose to tail on three lanes – just the thing a busy executive needs every Friday night (and I was returning at 4.00pm on a sunny midweek afternoon not the rush hour in the dark and pouring rain)

As the line in the Edgar Allan Poe poem goes “quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore”

16th November

This evening, my husband arrived home with photographs of Eurostar’s latest advertising campaign in Brussels. Words like appalling and disgusting seem totally inadequate.

We have so much to be proud of in Britain, human excellence, creativity and natural beauty as well as things of historic value which are the envy of the world.  Why then do we have to sink to these depths?  I sincerely hope that Belgians do not see all of us as murderers, maniacs or vulgar yobs.

Surely with a train as superb as the Eurostar we should be marketing what is best in the UK? As a Brit, I wish to totally disassociate myself from this inexcusable campaign.  Amusement can be provided without sinking to crudity. These adverts not only denigrate our country and its people, they are an insult to the integrity of the Belgian people in assuming that they would find them at all amusing. 

No doubt Eurostar will say that it is a commercial decision.  It certainly was not taken by a minion in a mop cupboard and must have been approved by the board.  It has also undoubtedly cost the British taxpayer several millions.  I personally feel that the board and executive should be sacked and the hoardings covered with an apology to the Belgian people.  

They may well be attention-catching but if as a result Europeans despise the English and the Brits feel ashamed, they have fallen singularly short of their objective.

How on earth would we react if other countries wanted to put such stuff in the UK?  I have no doubt that they would actually be banned and I would certainly have no wish to visit the places being promoted.  I have never seen any Belgian adverts like them on hoardings, in the underground or on TV and have always found Belgian people to be quietly courteous.

I am sure that they to do not relish the prospect of the thousands of scouts who seem to travel on the trains at the weekend being exposed to them – or any of their children for that matter.  To suggest, furthermore, that there is any similarity with the Mannekin Pis – the famous statue of an infant peeing - would appear to demonstrate considerable ignorance of the legend of the infant who saved his city and goes back to the 11th century and the statue to the 16th.

Shouldn’t we be saying positive things about the UK instead of positively awful ones?

Monday 19th November

I left home at about 5.45 to catch the 6.07 from Ashford to London Bridge and change there for a connection to Dartford. These are basically commuter trains so there is not really room for huge cases.

The lift up from the platform at Dartford was out of order so 33 steps.  Fortunately, I didn’t have my usual heavy case and bags.  However, the lady with the pushchair, toddler and lots of bags had a great problem.

Down the ramp to the Fastrack bus which likewise is not built to take suitcases. It was indeed very fast on dedicated lanes, via Bluewater, to Ebbsfleet taking just over 30 mins. We arrived at 9.05. This was in very good time for our 10.15 train.  However, as my previous journey to Dartford had incurred a 40 minute delay, I was not going to take any chances.

The bus pulled into an empty car park from which we walked through a tunnel to the station entrance.  The huge sign outside says ‘ Ebbsfleet, Gateway to England’. Geographically correct I suppose but to a gregarious Scot Ashford’s Gateway to Europe seems much more open-minded.

There was a jazz band playing, probably to keep warm, but no queues to get through check in. The lounge can only be half the size of Ashford’s with two ladies loos (I am told that blokes have one and one urinal) and one small café Nero in the far corner. There is a shutter next to it but whatever it will be was not open. I could have done with a snack having left home more than three hours earlier.  At least the lounge was warm.  I was very glad that is was fair, if cold, outside as there is little shelter on the platform.

I left the platform in Brussels at about 13.10.  Add 15+ minutes to get to the Grande Place and you see that it took nearly 6 3/4 hours. This is in great contrast to the direct journey from Ashford two weeks before which took under 3 hours from home to coffee in the café.

Friday 23rd November

My first trip to Brussels via St Pancras.

I went straight from my Tai Chi class at 11.00am to the station at Ashford to park then catch the domestic train to London Bridge. The ticket collector to whom I showed photos of ‘those adverts’ immediately said he would not wish his youngsters to see them. You don’t have much choice if your tram passes a hoarding. However, the conversation passed a few minutes of the journey.

I alighted at London Bridge and the trip via the Northern Line to Kings Cross / St Pancras went OK although there must have been about 30 steps in lots of little groups and thousands of travellers going in every direction.  That was a bit hard going with a heavy suitcase and three bags.

At St Pancras, the arrival area had few shops open and was very cold. I couldn’t find the ‘facilities’ so I checked in having been assured that there were loos there.  The departure lounge was extremely busy, nearly all people for Paris on the train before mine.  They were called to board about 25 minutes before departure – I suppose quarter of a mile is a long hike to the front of the train if you have toddlers or lots of luggage. Thus I found a seat.

I don’t like huge crowds and the ambiance is much less friendly than Ashford’s. There, you don’t mind walking across from your seat to the café to buy a croissant. At St P the café is in the far corner so I didn’t feel I could leave my things and I wouldn’t have managed to carry a snack along with everything else.

So you can understand that the visit to the ‘facilities’ entailed taking the luggage too. Not much room for a case in the cubicle and no hook for the handbag. Nor were there too many loos when you consider the number of passengers going through and it’s always the women who have to take the little ones.

Having left Ashford two hours earlier than usual, I reached Brussels Midi at 5.00pm rather than my pre Nov 19th 4.00pm so the total journey time was double.

There were fewer changes than going via Ebbsfleet but if it weren’t for the fact that I want to see my husband I would not be doing it.  It’s far too long and stressful.  I’m not surprised that some executives are talking about early retirement.

Ashford-Brussels ticket purchase very difficult

Eurostar told Ashford – Brussels passengers we could use the Euro Disney service and change at Lille.  Indeed the train makes a new stop at Lille which was not on the timetables before the changes in November.

Here are two emails I have received recently from very unhappy passengers.
First someone who lives in Brussels

“I tried to book online via Lille to go the UK over Xmas (travelling out around 21st Dec, back around 30th), but either the trains were fully booked or there were no standard price tickets and prices started at €170 one way. But for Brussels-London there were plenty of cheap tickets left.
 
At the Midi travel centre I asked a general question about booking online. I said that as you can only book Brussels-Ashford by doing 2 separate bookings, first you have to book and pay for Brussels-Lille, then Lille-Ashford (or vice versa). So you have to book and pay for one leg without knowing whether there are tickets available for the other leg at the price you want. (If you buy the cheapest tickets they are non exchangeable and non refundable so you could lose your money.)  They could offer no solution to this.
 
I asked whether, to avoid this problem, I could book tickets in the travel office. The answer was they can’t book standard price tickets from Lille to Ashford as Lille is in France and they can’t do this in Belgium (they “haven’t been given the code”).  All they can book in Belgium is non-standard tickets. This is astounding!

When I protested, the man in the travel office told me to speak to the people at the desk in the Eurostar check-in area. When I told them my woes, their first answer was that the Brussels-Ashford service was now discontinued and there was no way of travelling from Brussels to Ashford. It was news to most of them that Eurostar had told Ashford passengers they could change at Lille. Their advice was then to travel to Lille and buy my ticket to Ashford at Lille!! They’d obviously never given the matter any thought”.

Now from a UK resident…

On receipt of my new F.T. card, from Jonathan Davies, Head of Eurostar F.T., I inquired of him how I might best use my accumulated points for travel between Ashford and Brussels (it is no longer possible to book on-line as the system does not recognise the Ashford-Brussels element of the request).  In reply, I had a standard letter from Natalie Hadlum, Customer Service Team Leader. 

In the two pages giving Eurostar’s reasons for opening Ebbsfleet, there is one paragraph referring to the points.  I am told I will no longer be able to use my points to book a direct Eurostar journey between Ashford and Brussels.  I can use points to book Ashford to Lille ……… subject to availability.  I was amazed to read:  “if you opt to book from Ashford to Lille then you will need to make your own way to Brussels from Lille using Thalys or the normal rail service”.

So much for Eurostar promises. 

10th December

Those adverts again. Eurostar has got it badly wrong – the French I mean.
As schools in the UK will confirm, every French GCSE candidate would be expected to know that ‘au coin de la rue’ means ‘at the corner of the street’.

There is no French word for word equivalent of ‘just around the corner’. The meaning is best conveyed by ‘à deux pas’ – ‘a couple of steps away’ but no mention of round the corner.

Unfortunately, the Eurostar ads are just that, something surprising – or shocking is actually round the corner. Thus the campaign in French is nonsensical and meaningless. Oh dear.  I’m not paying for French lessons!

Brussels-Lille-Ashford

Success, of sorts.

I have managed to return to Ashford by catching the 8.59am from Brussels and changing at Lille for the 10.09 am which stops at Ashford.

It was a pfaff having to leave the platform at Lille then queue up to check in through two sets of customs, ticket control and security when I had done it just an hour previously at Brussels.

Nevertheless, it reduced the journey time to about three and a half hours which is infinitely better than five and a half or six. I realise that it is of no use to travellers from this side who want to return in the evening.  However, I did meet a couple from Lille coming over to their Ashford office. They now have to stay overnight which adds considerably to the expense so they cannot do the journey as frequently as they did. This will mean more loss of revenue for Eurostar and more cost to the taxpayer when we have to make up the shortfall.

Buying the ticket was difficult as the member of staff was going to issue one ticket Brussels-Lille and another Lille-Ashford at increased cost of course. I refused to pay more than I had before for a more inconvenient journey which was recommended to us by Eurostar. (Thrifty Scot you see).  It was finally fixed so it is possible. But if you try to do it from the continent I fear you may still have problems.

And of course you cannot do it on line.

Bonne Chance! 

Passenger Numbers

From what I can gather – the troops have been counting – there are generally no more passengers on Eurostar’s twelve trains per day from Ebbsfleet than Ashford’s current four.  (That would seem to give the lie to Eurostar’s protestations that the majority of Ashford’s passengers would prefer to use Ebbsfleet.)

Remember that half of these people could be travelling free with the Bluewater offer. I am told that Eurostar pays a per capita charge to Euro tunnel for each passenger to go through the Tunnel. I have been informed that this costs £14 each way per person. Thus a £59 ticket purchased on the two for one offer leaves Eurostar with the grand sum of £3 for the privilege of transporting two individuals to Brussels or Paris and back. 

How long will the taxpayer have to keep subsidising Ebbsfleet? I have not yet met anyone who likes the station in the desert as Ebbsfleet was called in a French railway magazine.  Some have complained that it is bitterly cold and described staff wearing coats because of the cold.

By contrast you are cosy as soon as you enter the Ashford station. Maybe we should leave ‘E’ in the freezer and reinstate ‘A’ at the top of the class!

July Edith Robson (a leading organiser of the campaign to save Ashford International Station) writes;

Today, Mr Richard Brown of Eurostar came to Ashford International station (I assume) to talk to a select few of which I am not one. Only the ’stakeholders’ were invited but not the passengers themselves. The cessation of Ashford-Brussels trains in November would appear to be a fait accompli as far as Eurostar is concerned. The decision, they say, has been a commercial one based (amongst other things) upon the data base of one million plus passengers which tells Eurostar where people live and therefore where they would like to travel from.

Ebbsfleet “horrendous to get to”

They (Eurostar) didn’t feel the need to ask the passengers themselves or consult them in advance. Their adverts for St Pancras station - “Less fuss, more ease” - are all about convenience yet they refuse to believe what people say about Ebbsfleet, that it is horrendous to get to. However, Eurostar will monitor the situation and may revise it in a year, they say. I wonder whether they will ask the passengers in this time. Ebbsfleet has a catchment area of over ten million people, they say, (about 20% of the UK population) therefore that is a better place to stop than Ashford. As far as I can see from looking at the timetable, Ebbsfleet has just been given the Ashford stops.

We were told at the Kent County Council meeting two weeks ago that 8/9 minutes stopping at Ashford (an intermediate stop) would unfairly inconvenience the city to city travellers. Obviously the same is not felt about Ebbsfleet which is also an intermediate stop. I asked Simon Montague today (as I stood outside asking why passengers were not invited) how much it costs to stop a train at Ashford. He said £1.million for a year. When I asked whether they would reconsider if a million pounds were made available, he said they would have to consider it.

Some of Ashford’s 500,000 passengers have said they would be prepared to pay a premium in order to be able to continue to use this station. Even an extra £10 could work out cheaper than extra fuel costs incurred driving to Ebbsfleet not to mention the unacceptable costs in time and increased stress as well as parking there for £11.50 per day.

Brussels to become quicker from York than Ashford

I personally think it would be well worth it to avoid having to take the train to Maidstone East, walk to Maidstone Barracks, train to Strood, another to Dartford, then the fast track bus to Ebbsfleet with a total journey time of five hours instead of two. From November, it will be quicker and easier to travel to Brussels from

Where do we go from here? Eurostar is obviously not listening to us. I think we have a strong case to put to Government based on the following;

- The choice of route was based on regeneration

- The amount of money the taxpayer needs to pay in subsidies and a £4 billion tab to pick up in all likelihood

- Ashford is the Government’s chosen growth area.

- Environmental issues

- The Dartford area is almost at gridlock, why add to it?

Please send your comments in to the website.

I returned on the Eurostar from Ashford early yesterday evening….I asked one of the women on the information desk at Ashford - (who told me that she is going to have to move house otherwise she would never get to work on time at Ebbsfleet) - how would one get back to Ashford from Ebbsfleet . The answer involved about 5 changes - unless one changed at Lille , depending of course, if ‘they ’synchronised the times….and then there were so few options.

I said that I was very concerned about the possible move to a few people waiting for the Brussels train ( there were at least 50 - 100 people waiting): they (still) did not know about the change.

I could see no large (or small for that matter) notice in Ashford station about the new route avoiding Ashford or the effect it would have on Brussels passengers; only info. about the terminus change & how wonderful this was going to be!!! Maybe I was not looking hard enough………

We were a group of six regular passengers and campaigners: a Frenchman who moved his business and home to Ashford within six months of Eurostar’s launch there; a Belgian who had done the same; a commuter who travels weekly between Ashford and Brussels. Two rail campaign groups joined us: a representative of the Marsh Link Action Group and a representative of Railfuture. Both have given the Ashford campaign their full support and have collected thousands of signatures. And, of course, I was there too.

Accompanying us were Damian Green, Ashford’s local MP and two of our European Parliament MPs, Sharon Bowles and Peter Skinner. All have worked very hard to help our campaign, collecting numerous signatures and asking questions in the House of Commons and the European Parliament.

Although the Prime Minister, a fellow pupil from Kirkcaldy High School, wasn’t able to come to the door, I too - wearing the school colours of yellow and blue (just like Eurostar) – stood in Downing Steet and told the BBC that I would “strive to my utmost” to get Eurostar to change its mind.

Holding the petition box aloft on the steps of Number 10, we made the evening news that night and featured on the BBC website, in Kent on Sunday and the Kent Messenger.

We are playing our part in the democratic process and the will of 15,300 people should be difficult to ignore. If there is any doubt about how important our protest is, as I write this article on 12th July, our petition is bigger than every single online transport petition open for signatures on the Prime Minister’s website. As for rail petitions, the next biggest rail petition - for another worthy cause put forward by the excellent Roger Ford of Modern Railways Magazine - has only 3,650 signatures.

However, while Eurostar are not ready for a change of heart, our fight will go on. Too many passengers at Ashford are still unaware of what is happening. When I speak to travellers in France and Belgium, I come away with the feeling they are completely in the dark. We must roll up our sleeves and step up the campaign. Keep sending us your comments and observations; keep writing to Eurostar; keep telling friends, colleagues and fellow passengers about what is happening. Ashford can have a great future but it needs your support.

Ré: You’re only 57 minutes from our new station at Ebbsfleet International…

Please can you forward this to the relevant person? I would appreciate a reply from the correct source.

Thank you very much for this information. However, it appears that you have completely missed the point with regard to Ebbsfleet and Ashford stations with regard to Kent users.

You point out that it takes 57 minutes to drive to Ebbsfleet. However, let us put this into actual context.

I usually catch the 0659 train to Brussels from Ashford. This arrives at 0940 and allows me to be at a meeting for 1000 or shortly after. A wonderful service. I leave home in Whitstable at 0550 for a gentle cross country drive of 25 minutes maximum with no traffic to Ashford (note the no traffic and the 25 minutes), this gives the required time to park and be in the terminal 30 minutes before.

At present there are no timetables for trains from Ebbsfleet. However it is a simple assumption that the train must take at least 10/15 minutes to travel between Ebbsfleet and Asford, so it may be expected that if a train is to arive in Brussels at 0940, it must be leaving Ebbsfleet at say 0645. Therefore I have to be at Ebbsfleet and parked by 0605, which will mean leaving home at 0505.

Traffic - has anyone from your organisation tried to leave Kent via the A2/M2 route in the morning. I do this regularly. Not withstanding the present roadworks (1/2 years), hopefully relieving the congestion when they are complete, the traffic stops around 2 miles short of the Ebbsfleet turnoff and crawls to the bottom of the hill below the Ebbsfleet turnoff. This occurs at any time from 0545 onwards in the mornings. Any further traffic caused by the Thames Gateway building project will only add to this.

So to be safe, to make sure that I catch a train scheduled to leave at 0645, I will probably have to leave home at 0450. A full hour before I leave now, doing a day’s work in Brussels and then an hour’s drive home.

It almost makes more sense for me to use Eurotunnel and drive - I won’t go through the maths.

So please think it through before emailing me with information, such that I am only 57 minutes from Ebbsfleet, to catch a train, that will by definition have to leave earlier to arrive at the same time, pointing out that I have to leave home an hour earlier than I have to now. I am only 25 minutes from Ashford with no traffic problems.

I do hope that there is no plan to change the Brussels train arrival time.

In the light of the above I would strongly recommend the re-instatement of a stop at Ashford for the Brussels train - I do not understand why a five minute stop with the associated five minutes of decelleration and acceleration causes problems with either journey time or energy usage.

I wonder when you will be closing your new Stratford staion to make these savings, after all it is only 73 miles from Ebbsfleet with a journey time of 71 minutes……. Excuse my irony but perhaps it helps to make the point.

Regards

Although Ashford was not on their list of towns to visit, a number of other towns in the south east were. Crawley, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury all played host to a Eurostar roadshow in recent weeks and cheerful invitations were sent out by a PR consultancy on Eurostar’s behalf to the great and the good in each area.

Now, many Ashford passengers, being reasonable people, would have welcomed the chance to go along to one of these meetings. Eurostar, after all, have yet to meet a delegation of their regular Ashford passengers and this could have been the ideal opportunity. After 9 months of dispute, a face-to-face meeting with passengers to debate the reasons behind the axing of Brussels services from Ashford might have helped start restoring their reputation among their passengers.

One Ashford passenger, a member of Eurostar’s “carte blanche” frequent traveller scheme, found out about the meeting in Canterbury and wrote to Eurostar asking why frequent travellers were not being invited. In the same cheery tone as the original invitation, he was sent a list of the categories of people who qualified for an invitation - for example MPs, councillors and journalists -but was told that there was not enough spaces at the meetings to open them up to frequent travellers!

Now we could be flippant and congratulate Eurostar on filling up so many spaces, something that eludes them on many of their trains. However, there is a serious point here: who, at the end of the day, finances Eurostar? Passengers, of course, are Eurostar’s prime source of revenue and frequent travellers spend many thousands of pounds a year. Surely it can’t make commercial sense - especially as Eurostar has yet to turn a profit - to dismiss a client’s concerns so lightly in this way?

From 19th November, so the story goes, thanks to a deal between Eurostar and local franchise holder Southeastern, Eurostar passengers will only have to show their passport and Eurostar booking confirmation to be able to travel for free on local trains in Kent. And this goes for journeys to or from Ashford and Ebbsfleet stations.

Now, anyone who has travelled to Belgium will know that this sort of deal is good news. After all, with your current Eurostar ticket, Belgian state railways allow you to travel onward to any station in Belgium. The mind starts racing as to what to do with your Eurostar ticket: leave medieval Canterbury at breakfast and enjoy lunch in the shadow of Leuven’s breathtaking gothic town hall; or how about going from Dover to Oostende - one ferry port to another - without even getting on a boat or stepping into a car.

Ah, with Eurostar, it seems we can dream at last. Or can we? As ever, the devil is in the detail.

First, as we have said many times, Eurostar’s proposed timetable changes mean there will be no more direct trains from Brussels to Ashford. Instead, you will have to travel some 50 kilometres further north to Ebbsfleet. What we haven’t said, however, is if you like making connecting rail journeys, you’ll find yourself in for a lot of fun with Ebbsfleet.

You see, whereas with a quick platform change at Ashford, you can get trains across east and West Kent, you can travel south to Dover or along the Sussex coast to Hastings and Brighton, Ebbsfleet can’t offer these connections. There will be no connecting domestic trains until 2009. Before then, you have to walk, or take the new Fasttrack bus service - also offered free to Eurostar passengers - to a nearby local railway station.

Perhaps you’ll choose the nearest station, Northfleet, a station with an “interesting and varied history”according to the Kentrail.co.uk website. Along with some tasteful photos, Kentrail helpfully explains why all the windows are covered up: it’s because of the building’s “limited opening hours and frequent vandalism.”

So you’ve passed your first test, getting to the nearby railway station. But can you get to the same places that you could from Ashford? To find out, we need the help of a travel planning website. Step forth the government’s flagship site, the mighty www.transportdirect.info

First, we tried to enter Ebbsfleet into the website. Unfortunately, as the website told us, “No options found for “Ebbsfleet “ as ‘Station/airport’. So we just had to settle on Northfleet after all.

Undaunted by this little setback, we then picked a time of day for our journey. For argument’s sake, we chose 10am.

Now for our destinations. First up, that journey to Canterbury.

Transportdirect comes back with a train at 10:25am, taking one hour 34 minutes to get there and involving two changes of train. Oh dear, not a good start, especially as the 10:07 train from Ashford gets you to Canterbury in 17 minutes. In fact, you could wait at Ashford and catch any one of the next four trains and still get to Canterbury earlier.

Okay, let’s try another journey. How about West Malling, home of the huge King’s Hill business park? You can leave Ashford at 10:05am and be there in 37 minutes. How does Ebbsfleet (er, Northfleet) compare?

Well, you can get a train towards London at 10:14am, almost at the same time as from Ashford. So far so good. Once in London, a quick dash at London Bridge means you can get a direct train to, er, “Ashford” that goes via West Malling. The time difference? A mere one hour and 6 minutes more via London.

Tonbridge then? 23 minutes direct from Ashford, 1 hour 31 with a change in London from Northfleet.

Brighton? Well, Eurostar’s free connecting journey offer won’t be valid on this route because, as far as we know, they are not looking to negotiate an agreement with Southern, the train operator that runs the service from Ashford to Brighton. However, even this journey along the south coast was quicker than getting a train from Northfleet.

We could go on but I think you’re starting to get the picture. It’s frustrating in a way because we, as regular Ashford passengers, would like to see Eurostar do well. Today’s story should have been a step in the right direction with international and local trains linking up to provide a seamless, environmentally friendly journey. It could have been the start of a major “drive” (ahem) to get passengers travelling to the Eurostar by train. However, because Eurostar do not intend to stop trains at Ashford and Ebbsfleet, it seems unlikely that many people will make use of this offer.

As we are beginning to expect, nothing is ever quite what it seems in the wonderful world of Eurostar press releases.

I think the Website is excellent and it more than adequately documents the history of the campaign.

Two areas that might be added are:

A. despite the fact that Eurostar is a private company and has been given the authority to operate the franchise as it sees fit, and therefore is at liberty to remove stations from the service if it thinks there is business justification, the Government has at least a moral obligation, if not a statutory one, to ensure that the public money that has been invested in Ashford Station and in the infrastructure of the dedicated high speed railway line to the continent, and indeed in the Channel Tunnel itself, is used to the maximum benefit of all UK taxpayers; it should therefore exercise influence over Eurostar to ensure Ashford and passengers using it continue to be served reasonably by Eurostar.

B. passengers currently using Ashford for Eurostar, and wishing to continue to do so, are drawn from a wide area of South East England - not limited to Kent - but also from East Sussex. Because of Ashford’s excellent rail conections, many of them are able to effect their entire journey using public transport and in so doing are contributing to a reduction in the motor car’s impact on the environment. None of the passengers in this category will be able to make their Eurostar journeys without either using cars or making protracted public transport journeys that will add hours if Ebbsfleet becomes the only alternative to Ashford for journeys to Brussels.

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 3^rd 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