Eurostar plans direct link between London and Geneva

Eurostar plans direct connection between London and Geneva Keystone-SDA

The Eurostar railway company wants to offer a direct connection between Switzerland and the UK for the first time.

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On Tuesday the subsidiary of the French railway group SNCF announced an expansion of its route network, which so far mainly connects London with Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris.

By “the early 2030s”, Geneva and Frankfurt are now also to be directly connected to the British capital. Eurostar is planning to purchase up to 50 new trains by 2030 and aims to transport 30 million passengers a year.

Last year the company recorded growth in passenger numbers of 5% to 19.5 million. “Demand for train travel in Europe is strong and customers want to travel further by train than ever before,” explained Gwendoline Cazenave, Director General of Eurostar.

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However, new connections between London and mainland Europe are rare, as the infrastructure for border controls has to be set up at the relevant railway stations. The last new route was the extension of the Eurostar London-Brussels connection to Amsterdam in 2020.

In 2023 the operator of the Eurotunnel under the English Channel announced it had completed investigations into the possibility of connecting further European cities from Cologne and Frankfurt to the rail network. According to this, there is a potential of one million travellers a year between London and Geneva.

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Rösti signs agreement

Swiss Transport Minister Albert Rösti and British Transport Minister Heidi Alexander signed a declaration of intent for direct connections between Switzerland and the UK at the beginning of May. However, this would require extensive preparations. As the United Kingdom is not part of the Schengen area, security and passport controls would have to be set up at departure stations, as at airports.

In March, the Swiss Federal Railways announced the possible procurement of up to 40 high-speed trains. It intends to deploy these on international connections, for example to Italy and France, in the course of the 2030s. At the time, it was said that destinations such as Barcelona and London were also conceivable.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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