Eurostar passengers at London St Pancras International will be able to arrive significantly closer to departure time under plans to cut boarding windows by 30 minutes, as the station’s operator said the international terminal had become too much like an airport.
Passengers are currently required to check in 60 minutes before departure. Under the proposed changes from the station’s owner, London St Pancras Highspeed, they will be permitted to board up to 30 minutes before their train leaves, allowing a shorter dwell time in the departures area.
Wendy Spinks, chief commercial officer at London St Pancras Highspeed, told The Telegraph that the current model had drifted too far toward the aviation experience. “It cannot be the equivalent of an airport departure lounge. We see it being a really quick process. Going straight to the train is part of the plan.”
“It has become too close to the airport experience, where you check in, go to security, wait in the lounge and then rush to the gate,” she said. “You will always want some people to turn up a bit earlier so that you can process them and get them on board but at least 50 percent of passengers should go straight to the train.”
Station constraints
The changes are linked to a £100m remodelling programme at St Pancras, designed to unlock additional international capacity ahead of expected competition on Channel Tunnel services later this decade.
Spinks said that the Channel Tunnel and the five international platforms at St Pancras could accommodate more trains, but processing space within the station has become the limiting factor. “Over time, security and border processing has taken up more and more space so that when you get through security, there’s nothing there,” she said. “There is a mismatch between what the route can handle and what the station can handle.”
Congestion has intensified with the expansion of post-Brexit border controls, including kiosks to handle biometric checks linked to the EU’s Entry/Exit System.
The redesign is expected to extend queuing areas into the adjacent arrivals hall, which is currently underused. Platforms are expected to be shared between operators, with passengers making their own way to the correct service, rather than being held in the departures lounge until boarding is called.
Preparing for new entrants
The overhaul comes as St Pancras Highspeed, which owns both the station and the HS1 line to the Channel Tunnel, evaluates applications from prospective new operators, including Virgin Trains and Trenitalia. The latter, owned by Italy’s state rail group FS, told RailTech earlier this year that they planned to launch services through the Tunnel by 2029 based on a “France-centred operating model” built around a new high-speed maintenance base north of Paris.
Recommendations on access rights to the London station are expected to be submitted to the UK’s Office of Rail and Road in the coming weeks.