Berlin-Paris high-speed rail route symbolizes Europe’s thirst for train travel

On Monday, December 16, at 9:55 am, the very first direct Paris-Berlin high-speed train departed from the Gare de l’Est station in the French capital for the German metropolis’ main station. It was a historic moment. A German white and red ICE train, the product of a partnership between the French SNCF national rail service and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB) departed. Two hours later, another ICE train left Berlin for Paris, setting up a daily direct rail round trip between the two capitals.

The service may seem modest. Although SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou and resigning Transport Minister François Durovray attended the inauguration of the first departure from Paris, this is far from a train revolution. No new high-speed infrastructure has been built for the occasion. The route uses the existing track that goes to Frankfurt. The journey is still too long – over eight hours – to offer a practical alternative to air travel.

This launch is no less of an event for that. It creates a concrete link between the capitals of the two most populous countries in the European Union, via Strasbourg. Above all, this new 300,000-seat year-round service is a further response to the thirst for high-speed rail travel. Western Europe has a major desire for rail, where in the space of 40 years, nations have equipped themselves with almost 11,000 kilometers of rail routes that travel at speeds of over 250 kilometers per hour.

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