The chief executive of Eurostar has made it clear it the company has no plans to bring back international trains to Ashford. The service to Europe was halted during the pandemic in 2020.
Interviewed in The Times on Saturday October 18 Gwendoline Cazenave, who has been Eurostar CEO since 2022, said she had no interest in resurrecting the service at Ashford International. “We are about city centre to city centre,” she said, explaining that stops in between would slow the service down.
Instead the company is prioritising links between London St Pancras and cities like Frankfurt or Geneva.
A spokesperson for Eurostar said pre-pandemic only small numbers of passengers were using their services at Ashford International. “Our Kent stations will remain closed throughout 2025 and will be reviewed in 2026. We understand that this may be frustrating, and we want to stress that we are closely monitoring the situation and, should there be any changes, we will provide an update.”
Last week MPs called on Eurostar to return international trains to Ashford during a Westminster debate on Tuesday October 14. Hastings and Rye MP Helena Dollimore described Ashford International as a ghost station and said the company had “a moral responsibility to the areas that it promised to serve.”
A number of companies have come forward hoping to break Eurostar’s monopoly of the high speed rail line, with one promising to restart services to and from Ashford.
This autumn, the Office of Road and Rail will decide whether to allow other operators to use the Temple Mills International Depot in East London which is currently the only place Channel Tunnel trains can be serviced.
Image Credits: Oxyman https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/International_Building_Ashford_International_%281%29.jpg CC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.
That’s really disappointing and shortsighted and a blow for Helena Dollimore MP after all her hard work.
I’m sure she, with others, will continue with efforts to attract Virgin, Trenitalia and other companies to run trains through the Tunnel in competition to Eurostar, who used the pandemic as justification for closing Ashford and Ebbsfleet.
Having just spent £2 billion on double decker trains you’d have thought that they’d actually try to increase business.
It’s seems to me absolutely bonkers to have eurostar trains not to stop at ashford International, for us who live there, it seems outrageous to travel all the way to St Pancras only to catch the eurostar which goes past my station to get to Paris, Brussels,etc, complete bonkers.
Absolutely agree. The same applies to a wider catchment area of people as far as Hastings, Margate etc much easier, cheaper and quicker to get to Ashford than up to London only to double back on your journey. Things have changed now, there are more people looking for surface travel, not air travel. Short-sighted and arrogant of Eurostar.
Even further. I could get from Eastbourne to Ashford in an hour. Eastbourne to London Victoria is 90 minutes, and I’d still have to use the underground to get to St Pancras to get the Eurostar. A much longer and expensive journey.
The same applies to Lewes and even Brighton.
They no longer stop in northern France at Calais-Frethun, this too was stopped during the pandemic.
It seems that only money speaks here, not community service. Are our politicians so constrained that they cannot speak out against E.Star’s monopolistic plans for Ashford and the station, which appears to be built primarily for their own interests and routes?
I so hoped they would be willing to stop in Ashford again.
Living in Holland and traveling to Rye and Hastings to meet friends several times a year, it would save such a lot of time and money. Let’s hope the Italians pick it up.
And maybe that would make Eurostar think again too.
Well that’s it then I will not use this service. It’s easier for me to take my car on le shuttle. If eurostar can’t cater for poeple in kent then I simply won’t use it.
Same here. But that’s the Lose:Lose situation, isn’t it, sadly.
I think this is ridiculous and have not used the service since having to travel London as would park at Ashford, and then 2 hour our so later pass where I could have got on .
I do also think the Ashford International should loose its title as since pre covid the eurostar hasn’t stop there so how it’s it then an International station ????
Utter disgrace. Hopefully another operator can come in and take away the monopoly of Eurostar and that the Kent stations can be taken out of being mothballed and served again.
Yes, agree. After all the taxpayers money that won’t into building those stations….
There were limited passengers at Ashford because of getting there from other train services. Plus only the 2 trains stopping early in the morning. Other train operators didn’t have an earlier service to get to Ashford. Change schedule for Euro star to stop at Ashford at midday. Would suit the majority of passengers from East Sussex
This is greed, Eurostar have used COVID as a way to strip the service of all it’s best most profitable parts and dumped the rest. The government might do well to make it uneconomical for Eurostar to not stop at Ashford.
Eurostar is licensed to operate on its routes. The government should make stopping trains at Ebbsfleet and Ashford s condition of the license.
Surely Kent county Council can do something about this. Why can they run through our county without offering any benefit whatsoever to its residents. These Kent stops should have been written into Eurostars contract at the start !
As a frequent business traveller to The Netherlands, the service from Ashford to Rotterdam via Brussels made complete sense both economically & sustainability.
Since Ashford was taken off the schedule, I fly via London City Airport as the most economic & time resource, convenient way.
If the Government wants people to use sustainable transport methods it must provide the means and leverage on providers to do so. This has always been about money and who pays for the ( whole) service.
ES are holding the Government and consumers to ransom. Allow another train service provider in and take away ES monopoly. ES arrogance then may change .
I hope they aren’t forgetting Ebbsfleet in all of this
Perhaps ES would have been more interested in Ashford if the line from Hastings had been improved allowing fast services from Brighton. Would also been of great benefit to Hastings and Rye. Ashford was a great way to access Paris and then beyond. There is potential for a deal if services into Ashford were to be improved.
I’m so annoyed about ES attitude. They used Covid as an excuse to not stop at Ebbsfleet and Ashford and they haven’t restored that service. Two stations virtually gone to waste. I do not want to travel to St. Pancras, leaving my car at Ebbsfleet to come right back and rush through Ebbsfleet, the same coming back. Utterly ridiculous. Is it really going to add that much time on to the journey? Ashford and Ebbsfleet have many new houses built recently, the people living there would benefit from the ES stopping at their stations, like before covid.
Ashford council is not doing enough to progress, with Ashford as being an International station is too far deceiving.
Although water under the bridge, the UK government lost its bargaining position when PM David Cameron’s government sold the UK’s portion of EuroStar ownership. If we still owned shares in the company this situation would likely have been avoided.
100% agree, the then chancellor George Osborne sold our 40% stake in ES in 2015.
Plus Brexit makes passport control now necessary and of course the French don’t want to pay for that
A factor not yet mentioned here is that it has cost £8.5m to install the new E Gates at St Pancras for passport control and plans for major investment to redesign and re locate the Eurostar “Terminal” at St Pancras.
Maybe a factor in creating another obstacle to bringing European trains to both Ashford and Ebbsfleet.
Creating borders is challenging as proved with the in fill of the Western Docks in Dover.