So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

Graculus wrote:
"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
...
Now that Eurostar has been running the full length of HS1 and has
been serving St. Pancras for a little over five months, who was
right? Did all of the people living in areas reachable from, via or in
SW
London who used to go via Waterloo give up and go to Gatwick? Did
swarms of people that once stuffed themselves into the Underground
and Thameslink to get to Waterloo from Euston, KxSTP and Liverpool
St now just walk up to the St. Pancras turnstiles?

All the bally-hoo about the half hour chopped off the London-Paris
time is somewhat moot for those of us who'd travel into Waterloo.
That half hour saved is spent making the unpleasant trip from
Waterloo to St Pancras.

I personally thought they should have kept a Eurostar Waterloo service,
even if only a limited service. But for people going that way it would
certainly save the trek across London. Plus the infrastructure was already
there!

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

In message , at 04:56:44 on Sun,
11 May 2008, Stephen O'Connell remarked:
All the bally-hoo about the half hour chopped off the London-Paris
time is somewhat moot for those of us who'd travel into Waterloo.
That half hour saved is spent making the unpleasant trip from
Waterloo to St Pancras.

I personally thought they should have kept a Eurostar Waterloo service,
even if only a limited service. But for people going that way it would
certainly save the trek across London. Plus the infrastructure was
already there!

Apparently much of the [station] infrastructure was moved to Ebbsfleet.
And the station was in a poor state requiring refurbishment. It's just
not economic to keep all that stuff, and the staff to operate it,
hanging around for a few trains a day.
--
Roland Perry

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

"Stephen O'Connell" wrote in message
...
Graculus wrote:
"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
...
Now that Eurostar has been running the full length of HS1 and has
been serving St. Pancras for a little over five months, who was
right? Did all of the people living in areas reachable from, via or in
SW
London who used to go via Waterloo give up and go to Gatwick? Did
swarms of people that once stuffed themselves into the Underground
and Thameslink to get to Waterloo from Euston, KxSTP and Liverpool
St now just walk up to the St. Pancras turnstiles?

All the bally-hoo about the half hour chopped off the London-Paris
time is somewhat moot for those of us who'd travel into Waterloo.
That half hour saved is spent making the unpleasant trip from
Waterloo to St Pancras.

I personally thought they should have kept a Eurostar Waterloo service,
even if only a limited service. But for people going that way it would
certainly save the trek across London. Plus the infrastructure was already
there!

I had asked about this earlier, and apparently they had considered
maintaining some services to northern France or to Brussels. Alas, however,
this did not work out.

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

In article , Graculus
writes
All the bally-hoo about the half hour chopped off the London-Paris time
is somewhat moot for those of us who'd travel into Waterloo. That half
hour saved is spent making the unpleasant trip from Waterloo to St
Pancras.

While for the rest of us, who travelled into King's Cross, we not only
gain half an hour on the main journey, but another half hour not making
the unpleasant trip to the unpleasant Waterloo.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 04:56:44 on Sun,
11 May 2008, Stephen O'Connell remarked:
All the bally-hoo about the half hour chopped off the London-Paris
time is somewhat moot for those of us who'd travel into Waterloo.
That half hour saved is spent making the unpleasant trip from
Waterloo to St Pancras.

I personally thought they should have kept a Eurostar Waterloo
service, even if only a limited service. But for people going that
way it would certainly save the trek across London. Plus the
infrastructure was already there!

Apparently much of the [station] infrastructure was moved to
Ebbsfleet. And the station was in a poor state requiring
refurbishment. It's just not economic to keep all that stuff, and the
staff to operate it, hanging around for a few trains a day.

They do it at Ashford Int don't they?!

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

In message , at 16:52:42 on Sun,
11 May 2008, Stephen O'Connell remarked:
It's just not economic to keep all that stuff, and the
staff to operate it, hanging around for a few trains a day.

They do it at Ashford Int don't they?!

On a much smaller scale. I don't recall them ever having more than a
couple of ticket barriers and one x-ray machine in use, for example.
--
Roland Perry

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

On 10 May, 17:36, Roland Perry wrote:
It also shows that the improvements are not sufficient. For the last ten
years the queues at the ticket offices have been unacceptably long, and
after the rebuilding, they still are. Why didn't they simply build more
ticket office positions?

If the bottleneck is station capacity, which it is, then opening more
ticket office positions would be an expensive way of making things
worse.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

On 10 May, 17:36, Roland Perry wrote:
It also shows that the improvements are not sufficient. For the last ten
years the queues at the ticket offices have been unacceptably long, and
after the rebuilding, they still are. Why didn't they simply build more
ticket office positions?


I seem to recall you saying in a previous post that the lines to the TVMs
are very long. I would imgaine that this situation is exacerbated by people
who are not sure how to use them.

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

In message
, at
02:23:56 on Mon, 12 May 2008, John B remarked:
It also shows that the improvements are not sufficient. For the last ten
years the queues at the ticket offices have been unacceptably long, and
after the rebuilding, they still are. Why didn't they simply build more
ticket office positions?

If the bottleneck is station capacity, which it is, then opening more
ticket office positions would be an expensive way of making things
worse.

Only if the queues mean that people decide not to travel [by tube].
Otherwise the rate of people joining and leaving the queue are roughly
the same, and has no effect on the instantaneous throughput.
--
Roland Perry

So, who was right about Eurostar ridership?
 

In message , at 13:28:12 on Mon, 12
May 2008, remarked:
It also shows that the improvements are not sufficient. For the last ten
years the queues at the ticket offices have been unacceptably long, and
after the rebuilding, they still are. Why didn't they simply build more
ticket office positions?

I seem to recall you saying in a previous post that the lines to the TVMs
are very long. I would imgaine that this situation is exacerbated by people
who are not sure how to use them.

That is also a problem.
--
Roland Perry