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Eurostar London terminal capacity down 30% after Brexit, says CEO
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on September 28, 2022
2 min readLast updated: February 4, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on September 28, 2022
2 min readLast updated: February 4, 2026
LONDON (Reuters) – Eurostar’s peak capacity in London has fallen by 30% due to post-Brexit checks on travellers using the high-speed rail link between Britain and mainland Europe, the train operator’s boss has said.
LONDON (Reuters) – Eurostar’s peak capacity in London has fallen by 30% due to post-Brexit checks on travellers using the high-speed rail link between Britain and mainland Europe, the train operator’s boss has said.
New border checks on British citizens introduced after Brexit have caused a “significant increase” in processing times at train stations, Eurostar Chief Executive Jacques Damas told the chair of Britain’s parliamentary committee on transport in a letter published on Tuesday.
Damas was responding to a request from committee chair Huw Merriman seeking details about the closure of Eurostar services at two stations in Kent, in southeastern England.
“As things stand, peak capacity through the stations is c.30% lower than pre-Brexit,” Damas said.
Some 40% of Eurostar’s customers are British citizens and the stamping of British passports by continental police adds “at least 15 seconds” to each passenger’s border crossing time, he added.
London’s St. Pancras train station, with all booths manned, can currently process just 1,500 passengers per hour, compared with 2,200 in 2019 before Britain’s departure from the European Union took effect, Damas said.
“It is only the fact that Eurostar has capacity-limited trains and significantly reduced its timetable from 2019 levels, that we are not seeing daily queues in the centre of London similar to those experienced in the Channel ports,” he said.
Merriman, calling Eurostar “a vital cog in our transport system”, said the committee would contact the rail regulator for interventions to support the train operator, which connects Britain with France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Brexit refers to the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union, which was finalized on January 31, 2020, resulting in various economic and regulatory changes.
Eurostar is a high-speed train service that connects London with Paris, Brussels, and other cities in mainland Europe, facilitating international travel.
Border checks are security measures implemented at international borders to verify the identity and eligibility of travelers entering or leaving a country.
In transportation, capacity refers to the maximum number of passengers or amount of goods that can be transported by a vehicle or service at a given time.
Processing time is the duration required to complete a specific task, such as checking passports or boarding passengers at a train station.
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