SNCF President Louis Gallois asserted last month that high track access charges for using the Channel Tunnel Rail Link 'will make it hard to have a viable Eurostar service' into St Pancras when Section 2 is completed in 2007. He also told the Financial Times that 'we will lose Waterloo' even though St Pancras was a less convenient terminal for business and leisure travellers.
Gallois considers that Eurostar's access charges are already too high at £250m. This year he says Eurostar is paying £170m for use of the Tunnel and £40m each to Railtrack and RFF, which manages SNCF's infrastructure. There will be a further charge in Belgium.
Thus on the 495 km London - Paris route, Eurostar is currently paying Railtrack as much for 110 km of 1840s railway with a maximum speed of 160 km/h as RFF gets for 320 km of 300 km/h 1980s line, plus the final 16 km from Gonesse into Paris Nord. The minimum Tunnel charge is fixed until 2006 at a level 50% above Eurostar's current usage.
When CTRL Section 1 opens in 2003, Gallois says that Railtrack's charge will rise to £140m. This means that Eurostar will be paying well over 10 times as much per kilometre in Britain as in France, compared to three times now. The proposed charge for using the whole CTRL into St Pancras is not revealed, and neither London & Continental Railways nor the government has been willing to disclose this information.
