railway companies

With its mid-December timetable change, Deutsche Bahn (DB) will be offering more international train journeys. The range of services is up by 25% compared with 2019. This means more than 330 daily journeys linking Germany directly to twelve neighbouring countries. One of the highlights is the new daily ICE service linking Paris to Berlin via Strasbourg....

Proxima has made a good start on the €1 billion it received from the Antin Infrastructure Partners fund before the summer. For €850 million, the future competitor of the SNCF in the west of France has just ordered 12 Avelia Horizon high-speed trains from Alstom. Delivery is due to start in 2028, which suggests that the trains will be...

The opening up to rail competition is set to accelerate in 2025 with the announcement today that Trenitalia will be offering services as far as Marseille on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille route, which is the busiest and, above all, the most lucrative for SNCF. "We are currently awaiting the final authorisation for services to start in 2025", the company confirmed to us this morning...

At this week's InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin, SNCF Voyageurs and Deutsche Bahn (DB) unveiled their new direct service between Paris and Berlin, operating daily from 16 December. DB will have the privilege of providing the transport thanks to its...

The horizon is brightening for SNCF's business activity. After a slow recovery, marked by a return to pre-Covid traffic levels of 80 %, the company is announcing an increase of 14% in the number of business passengers in the autumn of 2024. This follows double-digit growth in the first few months of the year. "The...

How would you describe Eurostar's new corporate offer? François Le Doze - It came into force on 10 September on all our markets, with the aim of unifying the offer that existed on our two networks - cross-Channel and continental Europe - with simplicity in the contract, at a legal level, in contact with...

Launch of a new corporate programme 10 September sees the launch of our new offer for companies of all sizes. The programme is harmonised across all routes in our new extended network. Depending on annual expenditure, companies can benefit from exclusive advantages such as negotiated fares, individual management and...

By the end of 2024, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) will be making it possible to plan journeys abroad even more flexibly. In addition to purchases at the ticket office and on SBB's online website, new functions on the app will bring together journey planning, ticket purchase and digital assistance in a single location. These services,...

Bad news: the France-Italy rail link in the Maurienne valley, which was hit by a landslide almost a year ago, has been delayed yet again. Although the line was scheduled to reopen this autumn for passenger and freight traffic, it has now been postponed again until the first half of...

The Grand Ouest is attracting new rail operators. After Le Train, which plans to launch in 2026, another major competitor to the SNCF has today announced its arrival: Proxima. The project is being spearheaded by a number of industry heavyweights, including Rachel Picard, former director of Voyages SNCF, and Timothy Jackson,...

Setting up a railway company from scratch in France is an obstacle course. Following the liquidation of Railcoop in March, it is now the turn of the start-up Midnight Trains to call it a day. Launched in 2020 by three partners, its ambition was to create a higher-quality night train service, a veritable hotel on rails, with cabins...

The single national transport pass is finally on track! Patrice Vergriete, the French Minister for Transport, made the announcement on 23 May, after chairing the first steering committee for this ambitious project a month ago, signing a memorandum of understanding with the Groupement des Autorités Responsables des...

Kevin Speed's ambition is to become "the" new player in high-speed rail transport by 2029. Its project has taken another step forward following the approval by the French Transport Regulation Authority (ART) of the framework agreement it signed with SNCF Réseau on 29 February. Signed for a renewable period of 10 years, the agreement...

A logical next step. Launched at high speed on the Paris-Lyon line in winter 2021, Trenitalia is completing its roll-out on France's busiest route for business travellers with a comprehensive offer dedicated to companies. Called Trenitalia Pro, this commercial offer includes low fares and, for business travellers, a complete range of services...

Taking on SNCF and opening up new rail lines in France, whether conventional or high-speed, is a long and difficult journey, fraught with pitfalls. Railcoop has just paid the price, with the directors of this original project announcing on 27 March that they were winding up their SCIC (société coopérative d'intérêt collectif - cooperative society of collective interest).

Dossier written by Florian Guillemin and Arnaud Deltenre 1 April traditionally provides an opportunity to stimulate everyone's creativity when it comes to fake news. But sometimes reality is more than fiction. On Saint Hugh's Day, it's tempting to look back at these often zany, sometimes dramatic, but all very real misfires.

How would you sum up your business in France? Marco Caposciutti - We have carried two million passengers in just over two years. Following the landslides in the Maurienne region, which led to the suspension of the Paris-Milan route, our business this year is concentrated on the Paris-Lyon route, on which we operate five daily round trips. Business customers...

Business travellers who frequently travel by high-speed train with Trenitalia between Paris and Lyon have been waiting a few months for this new offer. The Italian company has just unveiled its new product, Trenitalia Pro, designed to strengthen its position in relation to SNCF by targeting not only businesses, but also the self-employed,...

Kevin Speed is promising a revolution in high-speed rail travel with its project for low-cost TGV trains that should be running on the Paris-Lille, Paris-Strasbourg and Paris-Lyon routes by 2028. Through its commercial offer, called Illisto, the rail start-up intends to offer a kind of high-speed RER with 16 journeys per hour.

Despite the ups and downs at the end of 2023, marked by a strike at Eurotunnel and flooding in a south London rail tunnel which had a major impact on cross-Channel traffic, Eurostar had a good year in 2023. The rail carrier, in which SNCF has a stake of almost 56%, carried 18.6 million passengers in...