16.07.08
An interview with Richard Brown, chief executive of Eurostar
What plans do you have to encourage more people to use Eurostar rather than planes?
Lots. First and foremost, we’re still pushing the benefits of the move to St Pancras International – faster journey times and better punctuality that we’re getting with High Speed 1 and we would expect that to go on pushing more people to switch from plane to Eurostar for quite some time.
In support of that we’ve also got Tread Lightly, our environmental improvement programme. Firstly, we’ve set ourselves a target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions per passenger by 25% over the next… well we’ve actually got four years left because we started last year. We already produce ten times less greenhouse gas emissions compared with flying between London and Paris. So, ten times better and 25% better still over the next four years.
The second component is a ten point plan to tackle all of our other environmental impacts. Because what our passengers say to us is ‘well, yes, greenhouse gas and climate change is a big issue, but how can you be green if you’re not recycling your rubbish that comes off the train? Or reusing the water that you use to wash the trains, and so on?’ So the ten-point plan is designed to reduce our consumption of everything other than electricity, where we are using stuff to recycle it and to make sure that, for instance, the food we produce on board we’re sourcing locally, reducing food miles, getting organic food wherever possible and so on.
And the third component of Tread Lightly, since we moved to High Speed 1 last November, we’ve been offsetting those emissions that we haven’t yet reduced by investing in carbon offsetting, so far in India and China. So we are absolutely carbon neutral now. And we are seeing a growing number of corporate companies requiring or encouraging their business travellers to switch from plane to train. They can reduce their environmental impact when they travel with Eurostar rather than flying.
It sounds wonderful, but if we refer to Tom Harris’ recent claim that “high speed trains will leads to a 90% increase in energy consumption” – it’s quite a contrast isn’t it?
No. Factually it is the case – the faster you drive your car the more petrol you use, the same way the faster a train runs the more electricity it uses in our case. So he is, in principle, correct. We don’t recognise the 90% - it’s not based on a Eurostar train and it’s not based on the speed we run at. The analysis was done at 350 km/h rather than 300 km/h so it’s a spurious figure. It misses the point. The point is not, what is the variation for rail? The point is, how does it compare with other methods of travel? And we’re 10 times less emitting than flying. You have to run fast if you want to take people off the airlines, particularly in the current debate in the UK about the possibility of a High Speed 2 and a High Speed 3. Part of the objective must be to give people a choice, so that they don’t have to fly anymore – domestically, they can take a high speed train. You’ve got to give them a reasonable service, which means fast journey times if you’re going to tempt them out of the plane.
Were you surprised by the comment he made?
Well I was a bit because we’d been talking to the Department for Transport and his officials about this for some time. I think it wasn’t a statement he made, actually, it was a letter written for him which he signed. I think the official concerned rather slipped up.
How much of an impact has the move to St Pancras had on the operation for example in terms of passenger numbers and profile?
The impact has been terrific. It’s raised the profile enormously because I think, frankly, there are not many people in Britain, or indeed in France or Belgium, who are not aware of the new St Pancras International Station.
It has achieved an extraordinarily level of high recognition – quite unprecedented for a transport project, let alone a railway project. So that has obviously helped, and in terms of the actual numbers, we saw 21% growth in passenger numbers and 25% growth in revenue in quarter one, which is terrific. We’re running at around 93% punctuality since we moved. And that, for a lot of our passengers, that’s as important as fast journey times – they know they can depend on us. And that’s a stark contrast to the alternatives. I think the latest airline figures that I’ve seen for London-Paris was 68% punctuality, which is a bit dire really. Were it to happen on the railways, people would be resigning or being sacked. But life is not the same in the aviation industry.
How important a development is the Railteam initiative in increasing passenger numbers?
It’s very important for the future. It’s a work in progress at the moment, it’s very early days, because to put things in to change at some of the key hubs, like Lille and Brussels and Cologne, and to be able to offer through ticketing is a big project because each European railway as you’ll know has its own commercial policy, each railway has its own inventory of prices and reservations. Those have got to all be linked up and presented to passengers in a seamless way. So, it’s a big project but it’s important to us for the future to extend our catchment so you can travel through to Holland and Germany just as easily as people can travel through to France, for instance.
When will this be starting?
Well, we’ve already put some of the first steps in place. It’s not a big overnight implementation. For instance, ‘hop on the next train’, as we call it, is a commitment that if one operator’s inward service is running late and people miss a connection, the onward connecting carrier commits to putting them on to the next service – so they don’t get lost in the middle of Cologne. So that’s already been put in place, we’ve already exchanged availability of access of business and first class lounges, for instance. Again, they’re smallish things but they’re initial steps.
The big step is what we call the broker, which is a web-based reservations and ticketing system to allow you to buy through tickets across the rail team members’ network. That’s a 20 million euro IT project. It’s underway, but there’s lots to do.
Have you any plans to reintroduce a direct Ashford – Brussels service?
We said when we introduced the new timetable last November to people in Ashford, to the local council and to Kent County Council that we would review how the timetable is actually working out – what trains people are using etc. We’re undertaking that review at the moment. It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. It’d be wrong to draw any firm conclusions until we’ve thoroughly looked at the numbers. And we committed to take the relevant authorities through those numbers so that these people are satisfied that whatever we do is the right thing to do.
When do you hope to make an announcement?
Sometime during the summer. It’s work underway, it’s well advanced, we just don’t know the outcome yet.
Will Eurostar ever be financially sustainable? What needs to happen to make it sustainable?
Eurostar is not a single entity. We are already solidly profitable in France and my understanding is that in Belgium it is now breaking even. It is just in the UK that we are not yet profitable, and the reason for that difference is simply that there is a wildly different level of track access charges amongst the three different countries. The charges in the UK are of a higher order of magnitude per train kilometre than they are in France or Belgium. So, frankly, for Eurostar to become profitable and sustainable in the UK as well as France and Belgium the issue with the level of access charges has to be addressed, and it is something that the UK government is currently looking at.
Moving on to high speed rail in general, do you think the success of Eurostar has helped fuel the debate about high speed rail in the UK?
Absolutely, I do. London and Continental Railways built what we now call High Speed 1 and we deliberately chose the name High Speed 1 with the sort of positioning and expectations that this wouldn’t just be the only high speed line. I think we have always thought at Eurostar that the best way that we could help make the case for further high speed lines in the UK was by making a success of High Speed 1.
It is already a success. There are already communities in Birmingham and Manchester saying ‘we want some of this too, it shouldn’t just be London and the south east’. I like to think we’ve helped with that case materially and I think that we have a responsibility to do that.
Are we any closer to a high speed rail network following Network Rail’s recent announcement that it will be conducting a strategic review into the case for building new rail lines?
I’m optimistic. I think the case is steadily gaining momentum and broadening the support. I think all three political parties are talking about the need for investment in additional rail capacity and continuing investment in rail as an environmentally low-carbon form of travel for the future. I think it’s making steady progress. These are big projects. They don’t get going and get decided overnight. It is a process as much as a single point and I think the process is steadily building support.
What do you think the biggest obstacles are to achieving a high speed network?
The issue more importantly is how do we get benefits quickly? I think the case for high speed rail is a very broad one. It’s partly about additional transport capacity, not just for rail – nobody’s talking about building new motorways, but traffic continues to grow. Building more transport capacity is going to be important – it would be foolish to do that with a high carbon mode of travel. Linking the regions of the UK more and more closely to London is important. It takes the pressure off London which I think everybody recognizes is overheating in terms of housing costs and congestion and things. Helping to spread the booming London economy more widely across the UK is a key potential benefit, exactly as has happened in other European countries like France. From the environmental benefits, ten times lower emissions potentially – that’s pretty important.
What I had in mind was whether the political will is there or not?
I think the political will is steadily building because among all three main parties, uniquely, in my time in the rail industry there is a broad consensus that they need to see and encourage and support continuing rail travel. I don’t remember a time when all three parties have been behind something. The Liberal Democrats have actively come out and said in their most recent policy statement they actively support the development of the high speed network. The government has said that they will look at it and Network Rail are doing that on behalf of the government. And I think it’s well known that the Conservatives are also looking at what their approach should be as part of getting their transport projects together. So the political will is steadily building.
So the future’s bright?
Absolutely. I’ve been in the rail industry for over thirty years now and I do not recall a time when the opportunities ahead of the industry were so positive. There’s some big challenges, but that’s why we’re all in the industry because we like fulfilling challenges.
Do you think High Speed 2 will happen while you’re in charge of Eurostar?
Building a project like this, whether you’re building an airport or a road, neither of which hopefully will get built again, or a railroad – this is a ten or fifteen year project. I couldn’t possibly comment or speculate about how long I’m going to be here – that’s up to my board!
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