railway companies

After two years of Covid, which almost bankrupted Eurostar, the Eurostar Group, formed by the merger of Eurostar with its cousin Thalys, returned to growth in 2022. The financial year will see sales of €1.5 billion, 2.5 times more than in 2021, for traffic of 14.8 million passengers...

(Article updated on 19 June) After Trenitalia, the opening up to competition in the rail sector is about to become a little more of a reality in France with the arrival of Renfe. The Spanish national operator plans to launch an AVE line between Lyon and Barcelona on 13 July. Renfe will then inaugurate the Marseille-Barcelona-Madrid route on 28...

Deutsche Bahn (DB) is promising its users an even more intuitive application from November this year. Stefanie Berk, Head of Marketing and Distribution at DB Fernverkehr, explains: "DB Navigator has become a basic digital service for travellers, whatever the type of traffic. We are continuing...

The Dutch government has given rail operators until 10 June to offer services on international routes. Arriva Netherlands has seized this opportunity. On 8 June, this subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn submitted a route application to the Dutch Consumer and Markets Authority (ACM). The operator wants to...

SNCF has decided to review the Intercités night train services between Paris and south-west France. Announced on 24 May at a rail services monitoring committee meeting, this measure concerns the night trains known as "Le Pyrénéen" and "L'Occitan", the latter incorporating the new Paris-Aurillac-Paris.... night service.

After the programme that gave birth to the TGV forty years ago, a project on the same scale - 100 billion euros - is preparing to revolutionise the French rail world in the decades to come. Not at high speed this time, but at the gentle pace of commuter or regional trains. A...

Launched in 2013 with what the SNCF called a "start-up spirit", the Ouigo TGV has gone from strength to strength, now accounting for almost 25% of high-speed rail travel in France. Originally linking Marseille and Montpellier to TGV stations in the Ile-de-France region (Massy, Roissy-CDG, Marne-la-Vallée), the pink trains have been...

Then there were the German conservatives of the CDU and CSU. Then the Federal Court of Auditors. And on Monday 24 April, the Monopolies Commission. All three are making the same demand: fundamental reforms to the structure of Deutsche Bahn, including a possible break-up. "In the opinion of the Monopolies Commission, the...

Travelling from Vienna airport to Graz or Klagenfurt, the two main cities in southern Austria, can be a long, long way. This is despite the fact that, in 2020, Austrian Airlines has entered into a partnership with ÖBB railways to transport passengers by train from Graz to the airport....

Europe continues to strengthen its cross-border rail services. A new rail link between Dutch Railways (NS), Arriva and SNCB is due to get under way in December on a project linking the three main cities of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, Liège, Maastricht and Aachen. The regional governments of the Euregio have initialled a memorandum of understanding...

Following the success of Ouigo in Spain, SNCF plans to roll out its low-cost concept in Italy by 2026, according to information presented by Le Parisien on 15 March. Called Allegro, this project - which is due to be made official by SNCF shortly - involves operating high-speed trains on the Turin-Milan-Rome-Naples routes...

The launch of the SNCF Connect app in January 2022 was complicated. How would you assess it one year on? Arnaud Coiffard - The year was divided into three phases. The first, for three months, was to iron out any bugs that may have existed so that the platform would be technically stable. The second was...

On Friday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne made official what she described as the "new deal for rail". And she confirmed the figure that had already been circulating for a few hours - and even for several months, in Jean-Pierre Farandou's speech - i.e. 100 billion euros. "We are choosing to give priority to investing in...

The players in the tourism industry are each turning the page on the pandemic at the turn of 2023. Hotel groups have seen revenue per room exceed 2019 levels. Air France-KLM reported fourth-quarter revenues of €7.1bn, "a record level in the group's history...

10 new or improved high-speed or non-high-speed rail links. This is the number that the European Commission has decided to support in order to offer more affordable and environmentally-friendly mobility within the European Union. Promoting sustainable mobility The ten pilot projects were presented by the relevant authorities in response to...

The Le Train project is gathering pace. For its high-speed trains, the private operator has chosen Spain's Talgo, from whom it has ordered 10 Avril trainsets worth some 300 million euros. The invitation to tender was issued at the beginning of 2022 to a number of different manufacturers, following difficulties in acquiring...

On Tuesday at Brussels-Midi station, Eurostar Group unveiled the timetable and future plans for the ongoing merger of the Eurostar and Thalys companies. On the strength of its international reputation, Eurostar has been chosen to carry the commercial brand of the new rail group, with Thalys set to disappear...

The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) made the news official on 17 January. British railways will once again be disrupted by strike action. The strike is scheduled for 1 and 3 February. It is expected to affect around fifteen British operators, including : Avanti West Coast, Chiltern...

The opening up of the French rail system to competition is gathering pace. Following in the footsteps of Trenitalia, the first AVE (Renfe's high-speed train) from Barcelona arrived in Lyon at midday on Monday for a "dry run", a trial run without passengers in preparation for the imminent arrival of the Spanish national rail company...

When they opened their email inboxes this morning, passengers found a message from SNCF inviting them to "go for it" and take advantage of Connect Days and its 150,000 Inoui TGV tickets sold on SNCF Connect from €29 one way to Dunkirk in particular, €35 to Rennes and Nancy, and €49 to...