ridership on eurostar trains between London and paris is growing daily it seems and now Eurostar claims to carry 56% of the combined air/train market on this route and the % is increasing

and should increase even more when the CTRL new high-speed rail link in England and London St Pancras is opened in a few weeks, cutting train times to just over two hours, making flying actually taking longer when figure in airport to city and city to airport and longer check-in and baggage retrieval times, etc.

London-Brussels Eurostar now has a 40% market share and when the CTRL is open time will be reduced to less than 2 hours

So on this route take the train for the fastest connection and see the lay of the land in between and experience Europe's high speed up to nearly 200 mph trains!

I don't know how costs compare.... but it was so easy to take the train I don't know why the figure isn't 99% -

Depends on how they count the market. There will always be people flying between London and Paris, as they're connecting from other flights.

But if you count O&D traffic, I'll say the number should be higher.

I certainly can't imagine anyone staying in central London or Paris and going to spend time in the other, actually going to an airport and flying between the two. Just doesn't seem to make sense to me (especially if it involves Heathrow or CDG).

And, interestingly, there's no non-stop flights LCY-ORY.

"I don't know why the figure isn't 99%"

Because for at least half the customer base, the train's bloody inconvenient.

For most people in SE England, or the Ile de France, slogging into the capital, changing onto the tube, then going through airline-style inconvenience to get on the train is a great deal more of a nuisance than driving, or getting a bus or train, to one of the airports both cities are surrounded by, checking in (plane checkin times at London City are a great deal shorter than for Eurostar) then going to where in the other conurbation you actually want to be.

Most people don't live next door to St Pancras or the Gare du Nord. All six fully-functional international airports in SE England are on a railway or tube line - and taken together, they're a lot easier to get to for most people than St Pancras (and a very, very, great deal easier than Waterloo)

No major train stations in SE England?

Try getting to St Pancras from Woking. Or Oxford. Or Guildford. Or any suburb that's not on a direct line to St Pancras or Kings Cross.

Europe's two major conurbations are essentially groups of suburbs, in which most people live nearer to an airport than to the one railway station with a line to other. Trains have all kinds of advantages. But they're a hopeless way of getting from Slough to Senlis.

Any reason for that, given that train travel is perceived as the preferred mode of transportation in Europe? Or is it just by chance or lack of design?

"train travel is perceived as the preferred mode of transportation in Europe?" Not by any European I know.

People prefer trains for some journeys (like from a house in Islington to a meeting in the dixieme). They're iffy about some train journeys, even when there's an excellent train service (more passengers get a bus the 60 miles from Oxford to London than a train, because he buses are a lot cheaper and offer a much more flexible range of dropping points), and trains make no sense ar all on others (not even a non-stop TGV could remotely rival the time it takes to fly from NW England - or even London - to Warsaw.)

Just as few Americans would dream of driving into Manhattan from somewhere served by the Long Island Railroad, however many ill-informed Europeans witter on about "Americans' love affair with the car".

London and Paris have a number of railway termini, and practically no really usable railway beltway. So for most people in the London and Paris suburbs, geting a train from the centre means training in, getting the tube across town, then getting to your connection. By which time, you can have got to an airport and flown to the distant destination.

Flanneruk... thanks for the interesting input. Typical tourist.... I never thought of those people outside tourist centers. (And I never took statistics -

Flanner - I don't live in London and I'm only 10 mins from Stansted, but I much prefer Eurostar to flying. Getting an express into London, then a couple of stops on the tube really isn't any more trouble than driving to the station and getting the train to the airport. Or driving direct to the airport, parking at one of the godforsaken long stay carparks and then having to get a bus to the terminal. And since I've never got to Waterloo much more than 30 mins before departure, I really have to question your claim about check-in times - even at City airport.

Work sends myself and my colleagues to conferences in Paris on a regular basis, and we are always given the choice of whether to fly or take the train. About 80% plump for Eurostar.

I accept that Eurostar's pretty hopeless at present for those in the South West or North of England, but my experience is that it's very popular with those in the South East/East Anglia - even if there is a nearer airport. It's less stressful, less waiting around, more direct and people like that.