The Eurostar will not be able to run directly from Amsterdam to London for six months next year. That is one month shorter than previously reported. Between July 2024 and December 2024, train passengers must change in Brussels.
This is the outcome of months of discussions between the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, Eurostar, ProRail, NS and other parties involved. Outgoing State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen (Infrastructure and Water Management, CDA) announced on Friday House of Representatives informed about it.
The delay is due to the major renovation of Amsterdam Central Station. From mid-2024, the bridges around the station will be replaced, the passenger tunnel and platforms will be widened, the track will be renovated, a bicycle shed will be constructed and the IJ viaduct will be renovated. The operation is estimated to cost more than 1 billion euros. Postponing the renovation is not justified, Heijnen writes, because of safety concerns; some bridges are ‘end of life’.
Work will begin on the north side, where the terminal for passengers to London is also located, in July 2024. The British authorities check passports and luggage.
Customs control would be moved to the renovated Amsterdam-Zuid station. But that renovation is not finished yet, partly due to problems with the Zuidasdok. Waiting for this would mean that no direct secured departure to London could take place from December 2023 to 2036.
Eighteen months ago, Heijnen reported that the departure terminal for the UK was being set up at Amsterdam Central Station. Construction would take between seven and eleven months. During that period, no customs checks and therefore no direct train to the UK were possible.
Greater capacity
It now appears that the construction of the customs terminal in the Amstelpassage, on the east side of Central Station, could be completed a month earlier than expected. This is evident from a report by a Dutch and a Swiss research agency that Heijnen sent to Parliament.
The new terminal should be completed in December 2024. It has a capacity of 650 passengers. Then many more travelers can depart from Amsterdam. Now a maximum of 250 passengers can be checked per train, while a Eurostar train has 900 seats. There is also a VK terminal in Rotterdam, with a capacity of 150 passengers. Four trains leave for London every day. A fifth daily train should run in 2024.
“I find it very annoying that travelers now have to transfer temporarily, but in December 2024 a new and much larger terminal will be available for travelers to London,” Heijnen wrote to the House. She promises that the time for a transfer in Brussels, which now often takes an hour, will be shortened.
The two research agencies also investigated whether a temporary, smaller terminal could be constructed in the Amstelpassage. This would delay the construction of the full-fledged terminal. Eurostar would then only be able to handle more travelers at the end of 2025.
Keeping the current terminal open longer is the third option that has been investigated. That plan is considered too great a risk. For train traffic, because if something goes wrong during the renovation of the railway bridges east of Amsterdam Centraa, there is a risk of large-scale train cancellations towards the East of the Netherlands. And for finances, because the budget could then be exceeded by 300 million euros.
Options to do the check elsewhere and depart from Schiphol or Amsterdam-Sloterdijk, for example, had already been eliminated, says a spokesperson for the Ministry of Infrastructure. Although Schiphol has customs facilities, the train station in the Schiphol tunnel is very cramped and renovations there would also be complicated.
Moreover, any station other than Amsterdam Central is not commercially interesting for Eurostar. For travelers, the direct connection between the centers of Amsterdam and London is an important reason to choose the train over the plane.
‘Full-fledged alternative’
Eurostar’s problems have received a lot of attention in recent months. The direct train from Amsterdam to London was one of the few successful examples of the ‘clean’ train versus the ‘polluting’ plane. Amsterdam-London is the fastest growing route of the French-Belgian train company and the most flown route from Schiphol. Anyone who offers a good connection by train will immediately do something about the nuisance caused by Amsterdam airport. “The direct train connection between Amsterdam and London is a valuable connection that is a full-fledged alternative to the plane,” Heijnen said in her letter to Parliament on Friday.
The months-long fuss about the Eurostar at Amsterdam Central Station was “grist to the mill” of critical travelers, officials from the Ministry of Infrastructure wrote in an internal note. Flying fans see this as an example of the difficult growth of international trains – in addition to the delays, cancellations of trains, high fares and problems with buying tickets for (slightly) more complicated routes.
In response, Amsterdam councilor Melanie van der Horst (Transport, D66) stated: “I appreciate that an utmost effort has been made in which all parties have worked hard to shorten the time during which the Eurostar cannot run as much as possible. Six months is a lot less than the original eleven months.”
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