00:00More than 74,000 signatures have now signed an online petition asking for the return of Eurostar services to Ashford Station.
00:08But if this line makes a comeback to the county, what would that mean not just for Eurostar, but for Kent's businesses?
00:15What that would mean for us locally is that we can then confidently start to re-advertise Ashford as an international destination to those investment organizations.
00:27We can start to give some reassurance to those businesses that are looking to plan sort of four, five, ten year strategies that actually the international is something they should factor in.
00:40That in itself creates a much more interesting proposition from a social economic perspective where people see Ashford as being not just a nice place to live in the Kent countryside,
00:49but actually has international connectivity and provides a whole range of opportunities.
00:52So that, again, encourages people to perhaps relocate to here and sort of raise families here, and that brings skills into the territory.
00:59That may be what it brings to the county, but would those already living here feel as though they would make use of the services as well if they were to return?
01:08I think they should. I remember before they went, they were saying about getting a train that went straight to Amsterdam,
01:15and all my friends were really excited about that, and then all of a sudden they stopped doing it because of COVID, and then international went.
01:21Yes, 100%. I think they should bring it back because going away up to London is a very long way,
01:29and if they brought it back to Ashford, it'd be a lot better for a lot of people that live in Ashford.
01:36I think it'd be good for it to return, but also it's just as easy to get the train to London and then to elsewhere.
01:45It would be fantastic to come back. We've only lived in Ashford for about three or four years,
01:52but the thought about going to Paris or something like that for the day would be wonderful.
01:56But how does the local council feel about the service's potential return?
02:00The council's perspective on it is that we need the economic benefit of getting this station back into action.
02:06We believe that if it was running now, with an operator providing a decent number of services to it,
02:12we could be well over 860,000, possibly even over a million people a year.
02:17So the economic benefits of getting the services back are huge.
02:21We'd get billions of pounds worth of business into Kent and the whole of the southeast region,
02:27particularly on the tourism side, and the money that would come in
02:31and the jobs that would be generated from that would be incredible.
02:34So that's all possible at the moment.
02:37Obviously, we have a monopoly situation with Eurostar.
02:41They're very comfortable in St. Pancras.
02:43They're very comfortable pursuing their strategy of city to city.
02:47And there's no motivation really for them to reopen the station
02:50because they're making more money from what they're doing at the moment.
02:53Ronnie Glasthal for KMTV.
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