London St. Pancras Highspeed
Client: London St. Pancras Highspeed
Project : St. Pancras International Station Capacity Study
Background
There is a growing public appetite for sustainable travel to the continent. Polling commissioned by HS1 in 2024 revealed that nearly 80% of people in Great Britain, aged 25-34, are eager for more international rail connections linking London to Europe.
As the sole point of access to the European high speed network, HS1 is looking to offer new operators (in addition to Eurostar), access to their infrastructure to meet this demand.
However, St. Pancras International Station has many constraints. It is a Grade I listed building and, as a multi-modal transport hub, has to balance the collective aspirations of its many operators.
Active Thinking was commissioned by High Speed 1 to produce a blueprint to significantly increase capacity and improve the customer experience for the International Services at St Pancras International station to meet this growing demand for international rail travel.
Our Role
We put together a multi-disciplinary team of experienced experts from the rail and aviation sectors to build an understanding of the current capacity and customer experience. This acted as a springboard to develop the blueprint to demonstrate what the maximum capacity threshold could be, how to improve the customer experience and the operating model required to enable it. We developed a data-driven vision for the station, backed up with an architectural and operational solutions.
Outcome
Our study showed how capacity could be increased by 170% to 5,000 passengers an hour and the customer experience improved, whilst also being affordable, provide a good return on investment and respect the heritage of the Grade 1 listed building. We described how a modest amount of new infrastructure would ‘unlock’ most of the constraints currently hampering growth.
"We thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with Active Thinking. Having direct access to their team of experts provided us with an enormous amount of insight, analysis and direction towards our aspiration to enhance capacity, and improve the passenger experience, at St. Pancras International. Their collaborative and fast-paced approach enabled us to make significant progress on the critical aspects of the design within a relatively short timeframe. We look forward to collaborating with them as we progress through the design and execution of this exciting project."
Richard Thorp, Chief Operating Officer, High Speed 1.
