High-Speed Rail in France Stations

High-Speed Rail in France Stations

One of the main advantages of TGV over technologies such as magnetic levitation is that TGVs can use existing infrastructure at its lower design speed. This makes connecting city centre stations such as Paris-Gare de Lyon and Lyon-Perrache by TGV a simple and inexpensive proposition, using existing intra-city tracks and stations built for conventional trains.

LGV route designers have tended to build new intermediate stations in suburban areas or in the open countryside several kilometers away from cities. This allows TGVs to stop without incurring too great a time penalty, since more time is spent on high-speed track, in addition, many cities' stations are stub-ends, while LGVs frequently bypass cities. In some cases, stations have been built halfway between two communities, such as the station serving Montceau-les-Mines and Le Creusot, and Haute Picardie station between Amiens and Saint-Quentin. The press and local authorities criticised Haute Picardie as being too far from either town to be convenient, and too far from connecting railway lines to be useful for travellers. The station was nicknamed la gare des betteraves ('beet station') as it was surrounded by sugar beet fields during construction. That said, the station is now used by a reasonable number of people, especially impressive as it has no service to Paris (so not to extract passengers from Amiens station). This nickname is now applied to similar stations away from town and city centres, whether in the vicinity of beet fields or not.

New railway stations have been built for TGVs, some of which are major architectural achievements. Avignon TGV station, opened in 2001, has been praised as one of the most remarkable stations on the network, with a spectacular 340 m (1,115 ft 6 in)-long glazed roof that has been compared to that of a cathedral.