The Year 2007 …

… promises to be an interesting one with several new high speed lines opening in Europe:

* The biggest one will be the TGV Est line running from Paris east towards Strasbourg and Frankfurt (Germany).
* Then there will be the second and final segment of the CTRL between London and the Channel Tunnel, which should shave off another 10 minutes or so of the travel time between London and Paris/Brussels. Eurostar already now has reached over 70% market share between London and Paris and this should help even further.
* In Belgium, two new high speed lines should be completed that year - first, the segment from Liege east towards Germany (for trains running from Brussels towards Cologne) and second, the line north from Antwerp towards the Netherlands (and onwards in the Netherlands) for trains running from Brussels to Amsterdam.
* Then - important for parts of Switzerland - the rehabilitation of the line between Bourg-en-Bresse and Bellegarde should be completed in that year as well, permitting the speed-up of the TGV trains between Paris and Geneva.

All this should result in an abundance of new high speed train connections being opened in this part of Europe and considerable speed-ups of other already existing connections.

Posted in: Uncategorized | November 12, 2004 8:02 am