A new high-speed train linking Paris and Berlin is to launch in December, operators have announced.
The daytime service will complement a popular night train route between the two capital cities that relaunched last year to much fanfare but has since been beset by technical problems.
The daytime train service, which has been delayed by logistical issues and will take an hour longer than originally announced, will run between Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Paris Gare de L’Est, stopping in Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, and Frankfurt Süd, and will take about eight hours.
The fastest train journey now running between the French and German capitals takes just under nine hours, but requires two or three changes, making for a clunky and often unreliable experience.
There will initially be just one service of the new train each day, leaving Paris at 9.55am, and arriving in Berlin just after 6pm. The return trip will leave Berlin at 11.54am, arriving in Paris just before 8pm.
The operators SNCF and Deutsche Bahn say they hope passengers will see it as a relaxed alternative to flying, and a considerable improvement on the current route. Fares will start from €59 (about £49) for a one-way second-class ticket and from €69 for a first-class seat. Prices will rise and fall according to demand.
Reservations will open on 16 October, when rail enthusiast networks said they expected there would be a huge demand. There are about 530 seats on each train.
DB and SNCF began cooperating in 2007, and since then fast-speed ICE and TGV trains have run on heavily used routes between Frankfurt and Paris and Stuttgart and Paris.
The Berlin-Paris addition has been highly anticipated for years, not least with train operators across Europe under pressure to increase their services amid a political push to persuade people out of planes and cars, as well as a recent, post-pandemic trend for slow travel.
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The new route will widen travel options across the continent, train enthusiasts said on Tuesday, and act as useful add-ons to existing popular connections, such as the Frankfurt and Marseille route, which was launched in 2012, and Frankfurt to Bordeaux, which was introduced last year and runs in summer.
Much excitement followed the reintroduction of a night-train service between Berlin and Paris last December, after a hiatus of about a decade. Operated by the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) it has been beset by technical difficulties and has been suspended since last month due to construction work. It is due to get back on track by the end of next month.