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Paris-Strasbourg: Forget the plane from now on
The TGV-est line has been opened now. The high speed train will reach a max speed of 320 kmh (199mph) and the travel from Paris to Strasbourg will take 2 hours 20 minutes. From one central railwaystation to another one.
Air France already expects severe cuts in customer numbers on the line Paris-Strasbourg.
But it would be wrong to be limited to the purely French perspective. This railproject is an essential part in the European plans of establishing fast rail links from as far as Paris to Budapest as well as from Hamburg to Barcelona. Both connections shall meet together in Strasbourg. A first step are the new connections from the French capital to the German financial capital Frankfurt. (The German ICE will run the whole line up to Paris as also the TGV will enter German railways). The time for that 4 hours 10 minutes. Taking into considerations the effective travel time also here the airlines will come into considerable troubles.
In the meanwhile also apart from these major axis and the French and German program in countries like Spain, Italy and Poland there are running major infrasstructure projects of raising high speed raillines.
I am looking forward to their realisation. What do you think? Will it help to bring massive amounts of travellers back again from air to earth? You know this is not at least also a question of environmental factors.
Will there ever be some real high speed rail networks in the US American central regions of the east coast or perhaps on the west coast? (I mean something more impressive than the tank on rails called Acela)
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