railway companies

There's good news aplenty for Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). Demand is soaring and SBB is making money again. In the first half of 2023, the number of daily passengers stood at 1.33 million, an increase of 21.4% compared to the same period in 2022. This...

Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), the Italian state-owned rail operator, is planning to launch a high-speed line linking a large part of Europe. Initially, this would be on the same route as Thalys/Eurostar, Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam. With the eventual possibility of integrating a service to both Barcelona and Berlin....

SNCB's new transport plan aims to boost train travel in Belgium, with a target of 30% more passengers by 2032. With this plan, the Belgian railway company aims to achieve an annual output of 89.5 million train-km in 2026, an increase of 7.4% compared with the previous service...

The return to post-crisis normality has been a painful one for France's transport industry... The annual report on quality of service 2022 published on 26 July by the AQST (French Transport Quality of Service Authority) sums it up as follows: "After the upturn during the health crisis, 2022 marks...

We knew that British trains had a bad reputation because of their poor performance in terms of punctuality and regularity. This negative image has just been confirmed by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). On the rail lines managed by Network Rail, 67.8% of trains...

What if SNCF and SNCB launched a remake of IZY? Launched in 2016, Thalys' low-cost subsidiary disappeared from the radar last summer after six years of service between Paris and Brussels. The project unveiled on 18 July by the Franco-Belgian duo is reminiscent of this intermediate positioning: a...

The new system adopted by Eurostar in July is called "SmartCheck" and has been designed by iProov. Already being trialled from December 2021 to April 2022, it enables facial biometric passenger registration at London St Pancras station. It is reserved for Business Premier passengers and members of the...

Updated on 13/07 at 10am The SNCF is continuing to secure its supply of sustainable electricity. A few days after announcing its launch in the production of energy from photovoltaic panels, the railway company is unveiling a partnership with the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (CNR). This is the biggest power purchase agreement ever signed in France...

If you want something done right, do it yourself. Spurred on by the sudden surge in energy prices following the crisis in Ukraine, and driven by eco-responsible issues, the SNCF has decided to become a solar energy producer. To this end, the rail group has launched SNCF Renouvelables, a new subsidiary dedicated to the installation of...

The future Le Train company has announced that it has completed a new round of financing, raising eight million euros. Alongside the two historic shareholders, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa and Crédit Agricole Charente-Périgord, who have been with the company since May 2022, four new financial partners have come on board: Charente Périgord...

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...