A NEW battle of Waterloo is about to begin over the future of the station’s international terminal which serves Paris and Brussels.

Eurostar is considering closing its terminal at Waterloo when the new high-speed line to St Pancras, beside King’s Cross, opens in 2007. The company had previously promised to keep Waterloo International open and to continue to operate an hourly service to the two European capitals.

But Eurostar’s directors now believe that it will prove too expensive to maintain two London terminals. While passenger numbers are 20 per cent up on last year, they are still only a third of the 20 million originally predicted for 2004.

The closure of the £130 million Waterloo International, a vast steel-and-glass structure which won three architectual awards, would be a blow to millions of travellers to the Continent who live south of the Thames. They would be forced to cross London to either St Pancras or the new international station at Stratford. They now have access to fast connections to Paris by catching a local service to Waterloo and then taking an escalator to the Eurostar terminal.

The Rail Passengers Committee for Southern England said many passengers would consider switching to airlines if they were unable to travel to the Continent from Waterloo.

Tim Nicholson, the committee chairman, said: “They may stop using the service altogether if they have to heave their suitcases across London to St Pancras. Eurostar must understand they are running a service for passengers and accept that the best solution is not necessarily the one which is simplest to administer.

“They need to share all the figures with us so we can understand how they are going to reach their decision.”

Eurostar said that it had to balance convenience for passengers with the high cost of operating two terminals. “If we kept Waterloo open we would have to pay for two crew bases, two catering outfits and all the operating costs of running two terminals. We will be talking to users who currently come into Waterloo. But we suspect the majority of our passengers come from outside Waterloo’s catchment area and therefore will find it convenient to go to St Pancras.”

The company said that passengers who had to spend half an hour crossing London on the Tube would save most of that time on the new fast line from St Pancras. The fastest journey time to Paris has already been cut by 20 minutes to 2hr 35 min after the opening last year of the first section of the 186mph (300km/h)Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

When the second section to St Pancras opens in 2007, some services will reach Paris in two hours.

Eurostar said that passengers from southern England could also drive round the M25 to a new 9,000-space park-and-ride station at Ebbsfleet, near Gravesend in Kent.

Under one option that is being considered, Waterloo International would exist for a transitional period after the St Pancras terminal opened in the first quarter of 2007.

The closure would at least please those French politicians who have claimed that it is humilating for their countrymen to arrive in London at a station named after Wellington’s victory in 1815 over Napoleon. In a letter appealing to Tony Blair to rename Waterloo, Florent Longuepée, a member of the national executive of President Chirac’s RPR party, wrote: “You will understand, I am sure, the discomfort the French feel when they are welcomed by the name Waterloo after crossing the Channel tunnel, a symbol of co-ordination and co-operation between our two nations.”

Commuters into Waterloo, whose trains are frequently delayed outside the station because of lack of platform space, would benefit from Eurostar’s departure. Ian Brown, the rail director at Transport for London, said: “Those five Eurostar platforms at Waterloo would be extremely useful in relieving constraints on capacity on the domestic network.”

Eurostar said that its review would be completed in September and the future of Waterloo International would be revealed by the end of the year.

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