train

In mid-July, Renfe began services on the Lyon-Barcelona and Marseille-Barcelona-Madrid routes. One year after the arrival of Trenitalia and its Frecciarossa operating on the Paris-Lyon-Milan route, the launch of the Spanish national carrier on French rail represents a new stage in the opening up to rail competition, which will be possible from December 2020. Following the applications...

How would you assess Trenitalia's arrival in France? Roberto Rinaudo - The results are very positive, even though since the summer we have had to concentrate on the Paris-Lyon route because of the landslides that occurred at the end of August in the Maurienne valley, which led to the suspension of services to Milan until June 2024. Our...

The Ministry of Transport, headed by Clément Beaune, confirmed on 26 October at a steering committee meeting organised by the Préfecture du Grand Est: the Metz-Nancy-Dijon-Lyon line will reopen by early 2025, probably when the SNCF winter service is introduced in December 2024. It's a real breath of fresh air...

Normandy, Brittany, Pays de Loire, Hauts-de-France, Centre-Val de Loire: in these five regions, TER trains will be at a standstill on Thursday 2 November - or even from Wednesday evening until Friday morning. The storm Ciaran is forcing SNCF Réseau to introduce this radical measure: the preventive stoppage of rail traffic. The measure, known as "stop...

In order to fine-tune its yield management system and adapt to more open rail competition on its most profitable lines, SNCF has been moving in successive stages since 26 September to a new booking platform to replace the ageing ResaRail system. Starting with BtoB reservations for...

"Don't ever call me Thalys again". On 1 October this year, Thalys disappeared, merged with Eurostar, the brand chosen because it is the best known, particularly among overseas customers. This new beginning was well worth a presentation yesterday in London at the company's offices near St Pancras International station, and a small party to celebrate its first campaign...

Trainline and Fairjungle are strengthening their partnership with the addition of services from the Swiss, Belgian and Dutch national railways. Through Trainline Partner Solutions, Trainline's BtoB division, the young TMC now benefits from SBB inventories and Benerail, the Belgian-Dutch platform founded in 2003 by SNCB and NS....

After a slow start with the sale of bus tickets last January, followed by the sale of Italo rail tickets in August, Kombo is now making its arrival on the Italian market official, with the possibility of booking in seven languages. "We've gone from €30,000 in sales to €150,000 per...

The President wants it and the government will make it happen. For more than a year, Emmanuel Macron's government has been dithering over the benefits or otherwise of a single-price ticket for the use of regional trains. It would be inspired by the model launched by Germany - with a €9 ticket in 2022 during the summer. Since 1 May...

The same message is appearing on the various rail companies' online booking sites: trains cancelled between France and Italy. The situation is critical for road and rail traffic between the two countries. With torrential rain in the Alps, a landslide occurred on Sunday in the Maurienne Valley...

Could this be competition for the Eurostar on the Brussels-Amsterdam route? NS and SNCB have stated their intention to improve their rail services on this strategic route in the Benelux countries. The two national companies want to boost their capacity on the Belgium/Netherlands route. From 2025, 32 trains will run daily at up to 200 km/h on the Brussels-Antwerp-Amsterdam route....

Considered to be the railway project of the century, the Gotthard Tunnel was dug in the heart of the Swiss Alps. With a length of 57.1 km, it has been the longest tunnel in the world since it opened in 2016. For travellers, the tunnel means considerably shorter journey times. You can travel...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Of course, comparison is not always reason. At a time when we are scrutinising every air journey to assess the benefit/carbon impact ratio, it is better to have all the cards in hand to assess the relevance of an alternative, if one exists. The decree ratifying the ban on (some) domestic flights is a logical step in this direction. The...

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...

1,356: that's the number of train journeys analysed in a report by the European Commission, which wants to boost the share of rail travel within the European Union. The report (available in English only), entitled "How fast are rail trips between EU cities and is rail faster than air?", shows that air travel is still in the...