Competitors are scrambling to challenge Eurostar: Heurotrain aims to offer trains every hour between Amsterdam and Paris via Brussels

The Eurostar monopoly under attack from all sides. While the company, a 51% subsidiary of SNCF Voyageurs, sees several competitors approaching in cross-Channel connections to London (Virgin, Trenitalia, Gemini), it also has to deal with new players on routes between the Netherlands and France, formerly operated under the Thalys brand. In addition to the success of the classic Ouigo trains between Paris and Brussels and the upcoming launch of a nighttime connection between Amsterdam and the French capital by GoVolta, another rail startup, Heurotrain, is announcing its ambitions on this connection (via Brussels) with a high-speed offer.

The Dutch company which began communicating a year ago has just signed a 10-year framework agreement with SNCF Réseau, allowing it to reserve and secure "paths" between Paris and the Belgian border from December 2030, a very busy corridor. “We want to be the first independent European rail operator offering high-speed international connections between Amsterdam and Paris, by offering our customers available seats and accessible trains at affordable prices,” assures the company. And to recall that “this route connects three major capitals, which have a total of more than 20 million inhabitants and an annual travel market exceeding 14 million journeys”.

Still far from the mark "This is excellent news for Heurotrain. The launch of a new international rail connection requires investing several years in advance in trains, staff and organization. This is only possible if we also have the certainty of actually being able to access the rail network.

France now offers us this visibility for ten years", comments its CEO, Gerrit Spijksma, quoted by mobilithib. Concretely, Heurotrain intends to play the frequency card with up to 16 round trips per day between the three capitals, or on average one train every hour, in order to do better than Eurostar which offers ten daily round trips between Amsterdam and Paris. It also promises to keep places available and moderate prices for last minute reservations. and a high-speed wifi connection on board.

Obviously, if the project has passed an essential stage thanks to the framework agreement signed with the French network manager, there will still be a long way to go before we see its trains rolling. According to the Batavian press, Heurotrain claims to have already raised 125 million euros as seed funds but it will need much more to launch its operations. Like many new entrants in startup mode, Heurotrain is appealing to general public investors (crowdfunding) and hopes to subsequently convince banks.

Because it will take at least 500 million euros to buy trains, not to mention the delivery times which are getting longer and longer in the industry.

Machine-translated from French