As flight-free travel gains momentum to reduce travel’s carbon footprint, the EU is currently investing in its railways to provide better and faster connections to travellers, reports euronews.
In France, where government recently banned domestic flights for destinations that can be reached within two and a half hours by train, several new rail routes will launch between December this year and 2025.
On December 10, SNCF will relaunch its Paris-Aurillac night train. Le Pyrénéen and L'Occitan night trains will link the French capital with the south-central region.
In 2024, a TGV train route will begin running between Paris and Berlin, while Trenitalia will launch a new high-speed connection between Paris and Madrid. French railway company Midnight Trains will launch a new night train from Paris to Venice via Milan in 2025.
In the United Kingdom, High Speed 1 will launch a new train route from London to Bordeaux in 2026. Spain will also launch new routes to France this year. Renfe is planning to operate routes from Madrid to Marseille via Barcelona and from Barcelona to Lyon via Montpellier and Nimes.
In December, a new three-country link will launch between Liège in Belgium, Aachen in Germany and Maastricht, Netherlands. This project is a collaboration between rail organisation Arriva, which falls under Germany's Deutsche Bahn Group, the National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB) and Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
The Netherlands will soon see new routes launch. Dutch-Belgian train operator European Sleeper is planning to launch a night train service from Amsterdam to Barcelona in spring 2025. Meanwhile, QBuzz has applied for three new train connections: Amsterdam to Eindhoven, Amsterdam to Berlin and Amsterdam to Paris, which could launch from January 2027.
