@jorgeml i find it a bit excessive, yes. “Take off your belt!” What am I going to do with my belt? Go hijack the train, demand the driver drives me to Brussels instead of Paris?
@popeter No. Customs checks aren't a significant part of the checks - for Eurostar anyway. It's the extra time for passport checks that's the headache.
@jon Obviously they wouldn’t want to say what items qualify as suspicious.
Never been asked by Eurostar what anything is - in September we had a travel kettle, a phone power bank, numerous phone power cables and wall plugs, plus our “travel” metal cutlery.
Once, at Calais Eurotunnel, travelling by coach*, we were asked if there was a tent on our rucksack.
coach passengers should always be suspected of being terrorists or drug smugglers, seemingly.
@vandyke4ad Sure, they are pretty relaxed about what you actually have with you. I have shifted a whole load of kitchen utensils in Eurostar. But my issue is more organisational than personal-practical - if a future rival to Eurostar wanted to operate from somewhere other than existing terminals, what would have to be done to equip those terminals.
@jon If they have to have a scanning procedure, how much duplication (no. of lanes) of this is needed, would depend on the number of passengers, though a successful operator would hope for full trainloads.
A trainload is what Eurostar are dealing with, and that’s not particularly quick, to put it mildly.
Haven’t been via Eurotunnel, since the 00s, but the, there was no scanning of car contents. There might have been a device for detecting explosives.
@vandyke4ad Right. That’s exactly it. Where between that and passport controls or numbers of platforms for boarding is the bottleneck. It looks like passport controls are the worst bit though.
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