GERMAN Rail (DB) and French National Railways (SNCF) launched the first direct high-speed service between Berlin and Paris on December 16.
Operated by a DB class 407 ICE3 train, the service takes around eight hours with just three intermediate stops at Frankfurt South, Karlsruhe and Strasbourg. The westbound service departs Berlin main station at 12.02 and arrives at Paris East at 19.55, while the eastbound trip departs Paris East at 09.55 and arrives in Berlin at 18.03.
One-way tickets start at €59.99 in second class and €69.99 in first class. “Almost three-quarters of the bookings cover the entire route between the two capitals,” say DB and SNCF. “This underlines the attractiveness of this new European connection.”
The new service, announced at InnoTrans in September, increases the number of daily high-speed services operating between Germany and France using ICE and TGV trains to 26. The two railways first introduced cross-border high-speed services in 2007. Since then, around 33 million passengers have used the international services linking Frankfurt and Paris, Munich, Stuttgart and Paris, and Frankfurt, Lyon and Marseille. This is addition to the Eurostar service connecting Paris North, Brussels, Cologne and Düsseldorf.
