The four daily Eurostar services between London and Amsterdam are to be suspended next year, for what could be 11 months, starting from June 2024.
The news of the interruption of the service comes at a time when the UK and the EU are going all out to replace flights with train trips to reduce carbon emissions.
The suspension is due to renovations at Amsterdam Zentraal railway station. New space limitations due to the renovations will mean that passport checks will not be possible for Eurostar travellers departing from Amsterdam.
Plans to temporarily relocate the border checkpoint appear to have fizzled out.
The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure says it could finish the renovation work in seven months, but the project will not be completed before May 2025, when the new terminal will be relocated underground.
The service between the two cities began five years ago, with the journey taking 3 hours 52 minutes. A flight between the two cities is only around 40 minutes, but considering the journey to the airport, the need to check in two hours beforehand, the long queues for security and passport control and then the wait for baggage retrieval, it is easy to see why the train trip has become popular.
According to dutchnews.nl, Eurostar Chief Executive Gwendoline Cazenave, who only learned of the Dutch government’s decision to close the service last Friday, June 2, headed straight to The Hague on Monday, June 5, for emergency talks with Dutch ministers and rail executives about the situation.
Eurostar issued a short statement after the meeting, saying that all parties had agreed to keep working together to find a solution/compromise that would allow Eurostar to continue to welcome travellers in Amsterdam Zentraal.
The word is that, ultimately, Eurostar services will be moved to Amsterdam Zuid station. But that terminal will be ready only in 13 years’ time, in 2036.
