High-Speed Rail in France Travel TimesHigh-Speed Rail in France Travel TimesThe table shows minimum travel times between cities with direct high-speed trains (note: certain cities are linked by high-speed trains which do not travel at high-speed, for example Bordeaux-Toulouse and Marseille-Nice). Bordeaux Brussels Geneva Lille London Lyon Marseille Nantes Nice Paris Strasbourg Toulouse
Most TGV operate more or less point to point from Paris to a final destination, or run significant distances from Paris without any stop before they serve a couple of stations. There is no Clock-face scheduling in the sense it is used in Germany, Britain, the Netherlands or Switzerland or for urban rail in France. For example, TGV from Paris to Bordeaux and beyond generally bypass Tours, while some stop at the station of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, a suburb of Tours. Other TGV serve only Paris to Tours, ending in the central station of Tours. Even Lyon (with a population of 1.4 million people in the Métropole de Lyon) is bypassed by many TGV on their way to the Mediterranean, which rather have a first stop at Avignon TGV or even Marseille, or at Valence TGV for trains to Montpellier. On the other hand, most trains that link Paris with Lyon end at Lyon Perrache station and their majority runs non-stop. LGV bypasses of most cities support this scheme, so that only trains destined to these towns leave the LGV at the respective exit. Some cities are mostly served by TGVs through so called "beetroot stations" (named after Haute Picardie TGV which was surrounded by sugar beet fields at the time it opened) well outside the built up area but conveniently located along the existing LGV. All this speeds up travel time between Paris and the respective final destinations and probably avoids a lower use of capacity at the far end of train routes, beyond a significant intermediate destination. However, this results in less services between the towns apart from Paris, even if they are situated along the same LGV (e.g. Tours to Bordeaux or Lyon to Marseille), and thus also less suitable interconnections to and between secondary lines. A few TGV (or their Ouigo substitutes) also bypass Paris when connecting e.g. Bordeaux with Lille, the Mediterranean with Lille, Marseilles with Rennes and Bordeaux with Strasbourg. (All examples from 2021 timetable.) This approach is quite different from the operational scheme of ICE in Germany: German ICE lines usually connect major final stations like Cologne/Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Basel every hour with a couple of intermediate stops, except for trains that would depart too early or arrive too late at the respective ends of the ICE line. To a lesser extent ICEs end or start in towns like Frankfurt, Bremen and Dresden. Large cities along the routes such as Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Essen, Dortmund, Hannover, Leipzig and Frankfurt and Bremen are served by almost all ICE that pass these towns, whereas bypasses for passenger traffic usually do not exist. The vast majority of TGVs serving Paris stop at one of the old terminus stations dating back to the 19th century, before the formation of SNCF. Therefore, most trips on the TGV which require a connection in Paris require passengers to travel from one terminus to the other via metro or taxi. This is unlike the situation in Germany with Berlin main station or Austria with Vienna main station (both built in the 21st century) serving virtually all high speed trains in the capital or the situation in Spain where a tunnel linking the former termini Madrid Atocha railway station and Madrid Chamartín railway station in standard gauge allowing through service with high speed trains is under construction. | |||||
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