From Wednesday, passengers will be able to travel directly between Amsterdam and London by Eurostar. There will be two daily connections, and the route will go from London through Brussels (1h48) and Rotterdam (3h01) before arriving in Amsterdam three hours and 41 minutes later. The absence of a stop in Lille reduces the time it used to take between the British and Belgian capitals.
However, the journey will be extended by almost an hour in the direction Amsterdam-London, with passport and security checks being made in Brussels. On the Amsterdam-London route, passengers will first travel to Brussels-Midi where passport and security checks will be made before boarding a Eurostar train to London.
"This action is a temporary measure allowing the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to conclude an agreement on the control of passports, thus enabling us to offer a direct two-way trip, without intermediate stops. We hope to conclude this agreement by the end of 2019”, says Eurostar. Currently, the agreement that makes immigration checks possible before boarding the train, rather than at the final destination, has been concluded between Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.
"With more than four million passengers traveling each year by plane between London and Amsterdam, the market is equivalent to that between London and Paris when Eurostar was launched in 1994”, says Eurostar.
Eurostar says that only two trains between Brussels and London (via Lille) will be cancelled because of the strike on French railways on 4 April.
The Brussels Times
