Rail Europe

Saint-Malo now three hours from Paris

On December 8th, Saint-Malo inaugurated the first high speed service between the coastal Breton city and Paris, now only 2h56 apart. In Summer time, there will be three direct trains per day with two services in off-peak periods. Passengers will no longer have to change trains in Rennes, thereby simplifying their travel plans. Mont-Saint-Michel, the second most visited monument in France with more than 2 million visitors per year is more easily accessible. The TGV will stop at Dol-de-Bretagne, only 20 minutes by bus, which greatly facilitates access to this beautiful town for tourists and week-enders.

Residents and regional institutions have high hopes for the changes which a high speed service initiates. Saint-Malo is already a popular tourist destination with over 1.5 million visitors per year and the town is well-known for its sailing, thalasso-therapy, its fabulous sea-food, and its proximity to Jersey.

Businesses are also welcoming the new line as the town has been developing its bio-marine industry in cosmetics and technology. Traditionally, Saint-Malo has depended on tourism and the sea and can now hope to improve the local economy with the arrival of the TGV-Atlantique.

A new train station has been built replacing the old structure. The first section will be used for train-related services. An intermodal platform is planned for operation in 2006 and a new shopping mall is planned for Summer 2006. A hotel is also planned near the new train station.

New high speed line opens between Madrid-Toledo

High speed trains went into operation between Madrid-Toledo mid-November, putting both cities at 20 minutes distance one from the other. Toledo, a beautiful medieval town, is situated 80 km south of Madrid. The new service means visitors can either base themselves in Toledo and commute to Madrid for day trips or vice versa.

Spanish high speed trains, known as AVE in Spain, focus on passenger comfort. Seats are reclinable, the new streamlined train is one single class with 237 seats and 4 entrances, one specially designed for disabled travellers. On-board service in also provided.

Ten return trips will operate per day, with first departure at 6:50am from both Madrid and Toledo, with the last train leaving Madrid at 9:50pm and from Toledo at 9:20pm.

Among the governement officials who attended the opening, the Prime Minister, Mr Zapatero underlined the fact that the high speed service was part of an ambitous Transport Plan (mentioned in previous issue) launched in 1992 to link Madrid to Sevilla in the south and to Lleida and the French border in the north. He qualified the new service as an excellent project clearly meeting transport needs.

ETCS: first link between Vienna and Budapest

ETCS (European Train Control System) is the European Commission’s project to harmonise rail signaling throughout Europe. ETCS means that information can be transmitted between trains and rails throughout the entire journey, helping to calculate and monitor on a permanent basis train speeds. Each train has a computer on board linking into information nodes on the rails. Considerable security, time and cost savings will be made by trains travelling on international routes, thereby increasing rail attractiveness for travellers.

The first cross-border service to inaugurate the new information system, provided by Alcatel and Siemens, is the Vienna-Budapest line. The Austrian and Hungarian Railways, along with numerous European dignitaries attended the opening ceremony which was held 22 September.

ETCS has been adopted and is being implemented in Europe just as GSM became the norm for mobile telephone technology. Currently, international trains move through several national regulatory zones and encounter numerous technical barriers. The European response to this situation has been the development of ETCS to ensure that trains can cross national borders. Within 10 years, some 42,000 rail kilometers and approximately 10,000 locomotives will be fitted out with the new information system. The overall budget investment represents almost 5 billion euros.

Spain: high speed train services

Spain’s governement recently presented a new Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan which puts passenger and freight intermodal needs to the forefront. The plan aims to increase rail competitivity compared to road and air. The government also expects that the plan will help reduce gas emissions by 20% by the year 2020. 

More than half of the €248,9 million proposed investment for the Transport and Infrastructure Plan will be attributed to rail with a major expansion in high-speed services. Over the next 15 years, 9,000 km of high-speed, double-track, “standard gauge” (i.e. size of train tracks) electrified lines will be built. This is an ambitious plan compared with the 1,031 km built in the past 15 years. In the future, the government wants to ensure that provincial capitals are all conncted to the high-speed network. This would mean that more than 90% of the Spanish population would be less than 50km from high speed train services. With “standard gauge” in place, Spanish railways will be accessible to the majority of trains from the European network.

Today’s services connect some of the larger cities on the Barcelona-Madrid-Malaga axe. However, with this Plan, visitors travelling to Spain in the coming years will be in a position to access more easily all parts of the country.

Rail Europe will keep you informed in later issues.

New TEOZ service between Bordeaux and Nice

As of September 5th, a new cross-country Corail Teoz service will connect Bordeaux to Nice, with stops in Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille. The journey time on direct trains will take approximately 8 hours. This brings the number of Corail Teoz services up to 4 - other lines currently in operation are:

• Paris - Clermont-Ferrand
• Paris – Nancy – Strasbourg
• Paris – Limoges – Brive – Toulouse

Travellers on these lines have increased over 8% in the past two years, confirming the necessity for comfortable cross-country train links. New on-board services have been designed and integrated to ensure travellers’ comfort. First class travellers can reserve their seats in advance, selecting from seating areas with single, double spaces or for 4 and 6 travellers. Spacious leather seating with cushioned head rests and foot rests have been installed for maximum comfort. Each seat has its own light and a lever to raise or recline the seat position. For business travellers, all seating areas have sockets available for recharging lap-tops or mobile telephones. 

Second class travellers also have a choice in seating areas, with double seating and spaces for 4 and 6 passengers. Baggage areas are in the centre of the carriage and sockets are available in certain areas.

Special areas have been designed for travellers with children, offering them more open space with games and room to play, read or relax, without disturbing other passengers. Seating has also been designed for small children as well as a changing table and the possibility to heat a child’s bottle. Lastly, baggage areas are designed to hold several buggys, prams and travel cots.

Two carriages have large sliding doors to facilitate access for wheel chairs and seating has also been adapted to ensure that travellers can access these services more easily.

Travellers bringing their bicycles can do so (surcharge of 10€) in specific carriages on the Corail Teoz services. Special wall fixtures have been installed to this effect.

Eight totally new train sets will come on-board to offer 6 direct daily services and a additional one at week-ends and in the summer season.

New TGV EST

In June 2007, 37 million French and Europeans will benefit from the opening of the new TGV Est. Considerable time savings of up to a third compared with current journey times as well as new destinations will broaden access for travellers.

The new service will link in over 30 stations in eastern France. Not only will this line link into the east, but via the hub links in the Paris area, all the French TGV lines will link in together. This means North (Lille, Arras, Bruxelles etc), West (Rennes, Nantes etc) and the South-West (La Rochelle, Bordeaux etc) will be linked, creating the first high-speed cross-country lines.

For foreign travellers, on vacation or on business in France, the new TGV Est means rail travel will be remarkably smoother and faster. International connections will also increase the frontier countries with the new service, to Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg.

A quick overview:
• Strasbourg to Paris will take only 2h20 compared with 4h today,
• Visits to the Champagne area will take only 45 minutes on the trip between Paris & the Champagne capital Rheims,
• Nantes to Strasbourg, from the western coast to the east of France and doorway to Germany and Luxembourg will take approximately 5h.

We will keep you updated on progress in future issues of our Press Release.

Turin-Novara

For fans of the Winter Olympics, the count-down has well and truly begun. The next Winter Games will take place 10-26 February 2006 in Turin. Transport between the city and mountain venues can be done by rail network and shuttles as well as bus, trams and the new underground system in Turin.

Major infrastructure improvements are underway with the Italian railways upgrading services within the area and linking high-speed train services between major cities such as the new Turin-Naples service. This entire axe is due for completion in five years time.

A brief update on the current state of works in progress:

• On the Rome-Naples section of the line, tests are currently underway with trains circulating on the lines at 300km/h, which will open for commercial service in December 2005.
• By February 2006 ahead of the Winter Olympics, an 86km high-speed section between Turin and Novara part of Turin-Milan line will be opened for commercial service.
• Over 50% of works are completed on the Milan-Bologna sections.
• Over 80% of works are completed on the Bologna-Florence sections.

Journey times between Milan and Rome will be 3 hours apart by 2008 and by 2009, when all work should be finished on the Novara-Milan section, it will be possible to travel between Naples and Turin in 4h30. 

For visitors to the Winter Olympic Games, the main ceremonies take place in Turin, with the venues in the mountain sites situated in two valleys: Val Chisone and Val di Susa. Val Chisone starts from Pinerolo, from 35/40 km to the south west of Turin, and stretches to the sites of Pragelato, less than 100 km from Turin. To the west of Turin, visitors will find Val di Susa, where the other four mountain sites are based: Sestriere, Sauze d’Oulx, Cesana San Sicario and Bardonecchia.

Access by train:
The mountain Olympic stations are Pinerolo – linked directly to Pinerolo Palaghiaccio (curling) – Oulx and Bardonecchia. The stations are served by a free Turin 2006 shuttle bus services to competition venues. Olympic mountain venues will be served by the Turin-Bardonecchia-Modane and Torino-Pinerolo lines.

Tickets will be available for travelling on these lines, meanwhile for further information, please consult your agent. The list of all agents is available on the website www.raileurope.fr.

Berlin-Hamburg connection

Berlin and Hamburg are now only 90 minutes apart by ICE (the InterCity Express). Run by the German railways, the service was launched 12 December 2004. One-way tickets in second class are available from 77USD per person. Deutsche Bahn, the German Railways, expect to increase the number of travellers on this line from 2,4 million to 2,8 million in 2005.

The Berlin-Hamburg connection is historic as the first train line between the two cities was launched on 12 December….1846. It was run by a private company which linked the business communities of the capital and the thriving northern port city. At the time, the journey took 9 hours, an innovation when compared with 27 hours by horse and carriage. In 1933, a new train-set running at 125km/h cut the journey to 2h18. With the Second World War and the Cold War, train services between the two cities were slowed down to 6h with frontier controls between West and East. When Germany was re-unified, the journey time was shortened to 2h30. Plans to build a high-speed connection with the Transrapid were proposed, debated at length and finally dropped in 2000 because of cost factors, thereby leaving the way open for the ICE service.

      Destination   Journey Time   Service
    
• Berlin-Hamburg      1h30        7 daily returns

To purchase tickets for Berlin-Hamburg or for more information on the German Railpass 2005, please consult your agent. The list of all agents is available on the website www.raileurope.fr.

Thalys

Travellers using Thalys between Paris and Brussels are accustomed to reaching their destination in 1h25. With 25 daily connections, services between the two cities run almost hourly. For business and leisure travellers continuing their journey to either Amsterdam or Cologne, they have more time however to view the Belgian flat-lands through to Amsterdam or the hilly woodlands and Belgian towns of Liège or Louvain. This is due to change in 2007. New high-speed lines between Belgium-The Netherlands, Belgium-Germany will shorten journey times considerably. Paris-Amsterdam and Paris-Cologne will take only 3h, compared to today’s journey times of 4h13 and 3h56, respectively.

On the Belgian-German front, major works commenced three years ago on the line between Brussels and Aachen on the German border. New viaducts, a new tunnel – the longest in Belgium - and station renovations are included in these refurbishments. Set up of the metallic structure for the train station in Liege, designed by the Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, commenced the beginning of 2005.

On the Belgian-Dutch front, new high-speed lines between Antwerp and Amsterdam will also shorten journey times. These new lines run alongside existing lines – among the busiest in Belgium – thereby creating serious constraints for work teams. Great care has been taken to organise works around train schedules to avoid perturbing the service. As a result, the majority of works are carried out at night or at week-ends.

Destinations   Journey Time   Service

                                  Current / 2007
• Paris-Brussels            1h25                        25 daily returns
• Paris-Amsterdam       4h13        3h              5 daily returns, 6 week-end returns
• Paris-Cologne            3h56    3h                  6 daily returns
• Brussels-Amsterdam  2h39    1h30               5 daily returns, 6 week-end returns

To purchase tickets for Thalys, please consult your travel agent. The list of all Rail Europe representatives is available on the website www.raileurope.fr.

France-Spain: Construction started on the new high-speed line between Perpignan and Figueras

Work has commenced on the new international high-speed link between France and Spain, which will connect Spain to the rest of Europe by rail. On the Spanish side of the border, clearage is already underway pending the arrival of the two tunnel diggers which will dig out 8,3 km for the two parallel tunnel tubes.

The new link is 44,4 km long and this high-speed rail-line will enable travellers to shorten the current journey between Perpignan and Barcelona from today’s 2h45 to 50 minutes. The new link will also tie in with the extension to the Madrid-Lerida line through to Barcelona, thereby linking the Spanish high-speed lines to France. Commercial operations will commence in 2009.

The ramifications of this project are of major interest for Spain, as part of an ambitious rehabilitation programme for rail and road infrastructure. The Rail and Road Programme, which was recently presented by the Spanish Transport Minister, adopted a long-term view for infrastructural improvements up to the year 2020.  The Minister proposes to upgrade over 9,000km of the 15,600 km of the rail network in Spain. Spain has the second high-speed network in Europe, after France. Alongside the new rail link, existing high-speed trains in Spain run on 1,045 km of rail-lines: 

• Madrid-Seville (1992)
• Madrid-Lerida (2003)

Other long-term high-speed Spanish projects include:
• Albacete-Madrid,
• Alicante-Valence-Cuenca-Madrid
• Madrid-Valladolid
• Madrid-Santiago de Compostela
• Algesiras-Malaga.

Rail Europe will keep you updated on progress with this new line.