Eurostar eyes Germany and Holland in battle vs planes

Eurostar Chairman Guillaume Pepy (C) of France and Chief Executive Richard Brown (R) of Britain pose with a British police officer at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, September 4, 2007. Eurostar is beating the airlines in the fight for travelers from London to both Paris and Brussels, and the battleground will soon switch to Holland and western Germany, Brown said on Tuesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Eurostar is beating the airlines in the fight for travelers from London to both Paris and Brussels, and the battleground will soon switch to Holland and western Germany, Chief Executive Richard Brown said on Tuesday.

While airlines are still struggling with delays at Britain's congested airports, Eurostar will gain a further edge in November by shaving a further 20 minutes off its journey time to Paris via new high speed track in Britain.

The train made its inaugural test run from Paris to London in just over 2 hours 3 minutes on Tuesday compared with 2 hours 35 minutes over current track.

"We now have around 70 percent market share on London to Paris and just over 60 percent market share on London to Brussels," Brown said as the train traveled at over 190 mph through France.

"Holland - Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague - and the west part of Germany are the next key areas," he said. "The key thing is the new Railteam partnership, which is designed to open up the whole of the high speed network in Europe."

Railteam was formed in July by European railway companies including France's SNCF and Germany's Deutsche Bahn, aiming to integrate ticketing to ease travel on high-speed rail networks in an effort to lure passengers away from airlines.

The journey time from London to Amsterdam will be cut from over 5 hours today to just under 4 hours from early 2008, says Eurostar.

Train companies are currently attracting more passengers in Britain after a series of foiled terrorist attacks have led to tighter security and delays at airports.

Eurostar also said it had been boosted by people switching from plane to train due to concerns about the environment.

Environmental statistics vary dramatically, putting the CO2 impact of aviation anywhere between four and 10 times more than rail on short-haul journeys.

"More and more travelers are looking for a greener form of transport," said Brown. "In the first six months of this year, we carried 39 percent more passengers to the south of France. Some of that was due to the airport chaos, but some was because people are worried about their carbon footprint."