The first high-speed daytime train linking Paris to Berlin departed Monday at 9:55 a.m., with the aim of meeting the growing demand for trains from Europeans, more and more of whom are using them for their international travel.
Cello on her back, Lea Bader did not hesitate when choosing between the plane and the train. “For me, it’s obvious because I have a cello and I would have needed two plane tickets,” she explains.
With her two young children, she opted for a slower mode of travel, but more comfortable in her eyes, “and now it's direct. Before you had to change and it was horrible because every time there was had a problem, a delay,” she recalls.
In Germany, more than a third of high-speed trains arrived late in 2023 and closures of large sections of lines for maintenance or repair work have become the norm for travelers.
Kevin Kern, a 33-year-old Berliner, paid around a hundred euros for his ticket. “For the environment, it’s better to take the train,” he explains. A train trip between the two capitals emits 100 times less CO2 than a plane trip, according to the SNCF.
– New bridge –
This connection “creates a new bridge between the two great cultural and political centers of our continent”, greeted Anja Schöllmann, director of production at Deutsche Bahn.
“Eight hours on the train can be long, we hesitated a little” before starting, confided SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou, finally convinced that “people can stay (sitting) for eight hours, from then on that it’s comfortable and that we have a good crew.”
The two largest European companies have therefore decided to deepen their cooperation, which has already made it possible to transport 30 million travelers between the two countries. “European international traffic represents almost a third of SNCF’s TGV traffic,” insists Jean-Pierre Farandou.
The trains, ICE from Deutsche Bahn due to the lack of trains available at SNCF, will depart once a day in each direction, at 9:55 a.m. from Paris and 11:54 a.m. from Berlin. They will travel at 320 km/h in France, but only at 250 km/h in Germany, where very high speed does not exist.
Finding train paths to travel on the extremely dense German network was not easy, according to Alain Krakovitch, director of TGV-Intercités. He hopes to be able to revise the timetable for an earlier departure from Berlin next year, and thus save a few minutes on travel time.
Because this direct connection only saves 20 to 30 minutes compared to existing connecting journeys.
– Competition from air travel –
The price can also be a barrier, while low-cost airlines are very competitive on this route. For a round trip over a week in March, the train trip costs 198 euros, compared to 92 euros by plane with the company easyJet.
“Reservations are working very well. (…). We already have occupancy rates above 80%,” says Jean-Pierre Farandou confidently. “I am convinced that this train will be very successful and that people prefer to sit comfortably rather than sometimes have slightly more complicated routes” to airports often far from city centers, he continued.
The journey between Paris and Berlin, 1,100 km long, is probably the maximum that the high-speed train can offer while remaining attractive, concedes the boss of the SNCF. Beyond that, priority must be given to the night train, he says.
The night train between Paris and Berlin, relaunched just a year ago after almost ten years of interruption, has experienced numerous setbacks since then. The service was even interrupted between August and October due to work on the German network.
But for this TGV, Mr. Farandou says he is “perfectly confident” about the regularity of the service.
