As someone who lives in Brussels and uses the Eurostar to visit family & friends in the UK a few times each year then I take an interest in these type of stories:
Clearly there were a few problems yesterday (fatality near Lille, then a LeShuttle train breakdown in the tunnel) leading to cancellations of trains over a busy holiday weekend resulting in a large backlog of customers waiting to travel. Today services are running as normal but all those who were 'stranded' yesterday cannot be guaranteed to find an available seat today.
My understanding is the none of the Infrastructure (HS1, Tunnel, LGV in France & Belgium) is at capacity. Surely it cannot be beyond the capability of Eurostar to have a contingency plan to run say 1 extra train to / from each of Paris & Brussels to deal with the backlog if required? Even if it was not as fast as normal as it fitted into available slots then I think people could understand.
I would think it would generate them some positive (or at least stem any negative) publicity for reacting to deal with a problem not caused by themselves. So far all they have is negative publicity via pictures of long queues and frustrated customers featuring prominently on TV and in the papers. Thinking back a few years when the Ash cloud was around they could have earned themselves some good money and publicity by doing such a thing!
Not being a rail expert maybe someone could point out what could be the problem in making this work?
Clearly there were a few problems yesterday (fatality near Lille, then a LeShuttle train breakdown in the tunnel) leading to cancellations of trains over a busy holiday weekend resulting in a large backlog of customers waiting to travel. Today services are running as normal but all those who were 'stranded' yesterday cannot be guaranteed to find an available seat today.
My understanding is the none of the Infrastructure (HS1, Tunnel, LGV in France & Belgium) is at capacity. Surely it cannot be beyond the capability of Eurostar to have a contingency plan to run say 1 extra train to / from each of Paris & Brussels to deal with the backlog if required? Even if it was not as fast as normal as it fitted into available slots then I think people could understand.
I would think it would generate them some positive (or at least stem any negative) publicity for reacting to deal with a problem not caused by themselves. So far all they have is negative publicity via pictures of long queues and frustrated customers featuring prominently on TV and in the papers. Thinking back a few years when the Ash cloud was around they could have earned themselves some good money and publicity by doing such a thing!
Not being a rail expert maybe someone could point out what could be the problem in making this work?