The Amsterdam-London ICE

The ICE presented at London St Pancras (photo: Julian Walker)

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the first German Intercity-Express (ICE) train in London – this is high speed rail serving more and more of the most important European business destinations, as well as the fruit of decades international technological integration and market liberalization in the railway sector.

There is clearly a need for a direct Amsterdam-(Rotterdam-Brussels)-London high speed rail service and the arguments go well beyond the fact that I love London and would like to return by train. Amsterdam is a top European tourist and business destination, while Rotterdam is almost as important for work. This means that there are crowded Amsterdam Schiphol-London flights with long security and commute times, especially on the London side. (Now of course Amsterdam-London is possible today by high speed rail with a change in Brussels Midi, but the idea is to reduce inconvenience, otherwise you can fly as well.)

DB will compete with Eurostar in services through the Channel Tunnel to as far as Frankfurt and Amsterdam (photo: Martin Deutsch)

The infrastructure is ready, with the usual (and some unusual) delays, with high speed rail lines now virtually from London to Amsterdam, except for Brussels-Antwerp. It is reasonable to expect the high speed rail operator of one of the three countries involved to introduce this service, and that one is certainly Eurostar, as the Dutch NS Hispeed is currently struggling with serving 40% of the planned cities at 17% (breaking news, 33%) of the planned frequency, at about 50% of the top speed, and Thalys is just as an SNCF-controlled company as Eurostar, except that its trains do not fit into the British loading gauge etc. In fact, Eurostar has just ordered some new Siemens trains for services North and East of Brussels, although we will see how French politics react to such a large order given to a non-French company.

This "British" ICE is behind fences, required by regulations for trains through the Channel Tunnel - a major inconvenience for passengers and stations, as well as one less advantage to flying. (photo: Julian Walker)

The big news is that Deutsche Bahn has successfully crossed the tunnel (and executed an evacuation test in the meantime) and is planning to launch ICEs from London to Rotterdam/Amsterdam (and Cologne/Frankfurt) from 2013. This line will be the first ICE line completely outside Germany and the first foreign train in the Channel Tunnel. With all the mess liberalizing EU regulations created from separating infrastructure companies to gigantic resignalling projects to “uneconomical” regional lines in danger, this is the upside of the story, where a higher quality rail offer (and counteroffer from Eurostar) is possible due to competition.

I am still curious about some practical issues, such as how will it be possible to install Eurostar-style fenced-gated-secured platforms on all these new stations (and how this capacity loss would be justified by an initial frequency of some three trains a day), but if the ICEs get safety clearance on the Channel Tunnel, probably all these other issues can be ironed out, too.