JAKARTA - If nothing goes wrong, French rail operator SNCF and Germany's Deutsche Bahn plan to launch a direct high-speed train between Paris and Berlin by the end of 2023.
The new rail line was announced last month by the head of the French company, which came to Strasbourg to celebrate 15 years of high-speed Franco-German cooperation.
"We want to launch the Paris-Berlin TGV in December 2023," SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou told AFP.
"It makes sense because we see people accepting longer and longer journeys. Indeed, there are people who are willing to spend five hours, six hours, seven hours on a train," he said.
"In this case, Paris-Berlin is seven hours," said Farandou.
"A few years ago, we thought it was a bit long and we were afraid we didn't have anyone. There are more people this is not a problem, much better!" he said emphasizing, that "taking the train is a way to reconcile mobility and protection of nature."
For starters, there will be one round trip per day on this connection via Frankfurt. It will be operated as a partnership between SNCF and Deutsche Bahn with Germany's ICE high-speed rail, according to Alain Krakovitch, director of TGV-Intercités at SNCF.
According to him, in the future, the second daily round trip can also be equipped with the French TGV (high-speed train).
"It's quite symbolic of the evolution of our society, and the fact that many of our citizens prefer trains," he explained.
"Our observation today is that Paris-Milan and Paris-Barcelona have extraordinary occupancy rates: in Paris-Milan, the offer doubled with the arrival of Trenitalia (an Italian public company, which came to compete with SNCF TGV in December) , and even so, the train was full," he explained.
"We should be able to have the same thing in Paris-Berlin," he said.
The daily TGV linking Frankfurt to Marseille via Strasbourg and Lyon has been a success, continued Krakovitch.
The Paris-Berlin daytime high-speed trains will be in addition to the night train connections between the two capitals. It will be operated by Austrian railway BB in collaboration with SNCF and Deutsche Bahn and will also start at the end of 2023.
"At the same time there will be night trains and day trains. We will choose according to taste. We make Europe somewhere, Europe of everyday life. We make peace in Europe by train," said Jean-Pierre Farandou.
"I believe that we need more railroads in Europe and a strong Europe needs strong interconnections on the rails," his colleague from Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz echoed.
The SNCF and Deutsche Bahn have been running high-speed trains, the TGV and ICE, between France and Germany since the opening of the first section of the Paris-Strasbourg high-speed line in June 2007.
Over the past 15 years, the two companies have transported 25 million people on the Paris-Frankfurt, Paris-Stuttgart-Munich and Frankfurt-Marseille routes, with trains now outpacing planes on the Paris-Frankfurt routes.
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