Train travel set for a renaissance

.
Photo © Great Rail Journeys

Continental train travel looks set for a renaissance this year as improvements to rail services will mean shorter journeys to Europe and upgraded facilities...

The new St Pancras International is due to open in November, shifting Eurostar services to the continent from Waterloo to the new ultra-modern terminal in North London. The journey to Paris will be cut by 25 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes and the fastest train to Brussels will take 1 hour 51 minutes.

The move will be more convenient for travellers from the North who will no longer have to cross central London to use Eurostar's services, though the company says it won't affect journey times for people living on routes into Waterloo as the overall journey time to the continent via St Pancras will be about the same. Nearly 8 million passengers took the Eurostar in 2006.

Elsewhere, the completion of the high-speed line between Madrid and Barcelona will bring the fastest journey between the cities down to about four hours. And in June, the opening of a new TGV line from Paris Gare de l'Est (a 10-minute walk from Gare du Nord) will whiz travellers to Strasbourg and the Franco-German border in just over two hours.

Train travel also looks set to become marketed as the environmentally friendly alternative to flying. A recent press release issued by train specialist Great Rail Journeys, entitled '‘Low Carb’ travel drives rail holidays expansion', cited a recent YouGov poll, which found that "39 percent of people have already changed their travel habits in some way due to worries about climate change, and 41 percent of travellers - when shown the comparative air/train CO2 emissions between London and Paris/Brussels - say they are ‘much more likely’ to take the train in future".

Eurostar recently commissioned a study comparing flying with travelling on its trains from London to the continent and subsequently took out a full-page advertisement in ES magazine claiming 'travelling to Paris by Eurostar releases ten times less carbon dioxide than a plane.'

Should ferry companies be doing the same?