New TGV Lines: Marseille-Nice, Dijon, Rennes, Bordeaux, etc.

Coastal route for LGV-PACA

FRANCE: After studying a range of options, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo has confirmed the preferred route for the proposed LGV Provence - Alpes - Côte d'Azur to Nice. This will follow the existing coastal railway through Marseille and Toulon rather than taking a shorter direct route east from Aix-en-Provence.

The line will be about 180 km long, with about 60 km of tunneling, including 10 km of tunnels under Marseille. This will be a departure from the typical practice with LGV's (Lignes à Grande Vitesse, "High-Speed Lines"), which is to route them away from cities. The estimated expense will be 11 to 16 billion euros, of which the French government will contribute about 8 billion euros. About 4 billion euros more will be enough to extend the line about 40 km past the Principality of Monaco to Ventimiglia, across the border with Italy.

France's HSR builders are currently at work on some other projects:

LGV Perpignan-Figueres, crossing the France-Spain border at the east end of the Pyrenees
LGV Rhin-Rhône, three lines radiating from Dijon eastward to Mulhouse, southward to Lyon, and westward to the Paris-Lyon line
Rebuilding the Haut-Bugey line between Bourg-en-Brasse and Bellegarde to allow faster service to Geneva, Switzerland

They will soon go ahead with some other projects, according to Extra funds will speed up French investment. These are

LGV Sud Europe Atlantique / Sud Ouest: an extension of the southwestward LGV-Atlantique branch from Tours to Bordeaux
LGV: Bretagne - Pays de la Loire: an extension of the westward LGV-Atlantique branch from Le Mans to Rennes
LGV Est completion, from Baudrecourt east to Strasbourg
A bypass from Nîmes (near the Lyon-Marseille LGV) southwest Montpellier

From lLong-term TGV plans are projects in earlier stages of planning:

Montpellier - Perpignan
Bordeaux - Toulouse
Bordeaux - Hendaye at the French-Spanish border at the west end of the Pyrenees
Extension of the LGV Interconnexion near Paris from the LGV Sud-Est to the LGV Atlantique
LGV Picardie: Paris - Amiens - Calais
Lyon Turin Ferroviaire, including a new base tunnel across the Alps

So if they build these lines, they will get at least 2500 more route-km of high-speed trackage. As an American, I can only look on with envy.

All i can say is WOW.......... All these new projects and we still havent built not one dedicated line here in the U.S. I love the NEC but i'm dying to see a real dedicated network built in this country.

They plan to start construction on the Tours-Bordeaux and Baudrecourt-Strasbourg lines in 2011, and for the Bretagne line, they are still in the bidding process: Three shortlisted for LGV Bretagne

It's not just the TGV; French cities will likely get additional urban-rail systems. Paris may get an upgrade of Metro Line 13, an extension of RER regional-rail line E westward, and an automated line around the city. Other cities may have light-rail and separated-bus lines expanded from the present 329 km to about 1800 km. Also, France will get three autoroutes ferroviaires. One of them is an extension of the Fréjus one across the Alps to Lyon, another is an expansion of a Lorry Rail route between Perpignan and Luxembourg, and a third one is a new one between the Basque country and the Paris area / northern France. Since these lines' trains will likely carry truck trailers or even complete trucks, their axle loading will likely be too great for high-speed lines.

France is hardly alone with its 1700-km /1100-mi TGV system; Spain has its 1400-km / 900-mi AVE system, which it is vigorously expanding. It now has lines from Madrid northwest to Valladolid, northeast to Barcelona, and south Cordoba, with lines further southward from Cordoba to Sevilla and Malaga. There are several lines under construction, like from Barcelona to the Perpignan-Figueres line, the "Basque Y" in the north, some northwestern lines, and a line from Caceres and Merida westward to Lisbon, Portugal. In Portugal itself is a line in the works from Lisbon north to Porto.

Italy has been no slouch either, having nearly 1000 km / 600 mi of high-speed lines, and building and planning more.

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As to high-speed sleeper service, I evaluated some capital-to-capital routes with Google-Maps highway distances, finding their travel time for 250 km/h:

London - Paris - Lyon - Barcelona - Madrid: 2300 km / 1400 mi - 9 h
London - Paris - Bordeaux - Madrid: 1900 km / 1200 mi - 8 h
London - Paris - Lyon - Milan - Rome: 2000 km / 1200 mi - 8 h

Times with Brussels or Amsterdam instead of London are similar.

In summary, the times are about right for high-speed overnight service.

In summary, the times are about right for high-speed overnight service.

But the trains necessary and designed for these services were sold to Canada, unused.

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george matthews wrote:

In summary, the times are about right for high-speed overnight service.

But the trains necessary and designed for these services were sold to Canada, unused.

Details?

This seems like something from some years back, when the network of high-speed lines had been much smaller, meaning significantly greater travel time. I will now examine the eastern London-Madrid route in more detail, in order to see what it was like in past years.

Total length of route: 2123 km
Year, high-speed-route distance, traditional-route distance
1981: 352 km, 1771 km
1994: 874 km, 1249 km
2003: 1511 km, 612 km
2008: 1726 km, 397 km
2015: 1963 km, 160 km

1981: The first European HSR line, the Paris-Lyon LGV
1994: Big year. High-speed trackage from the Chunnel to Valence
2003: From southeast England to to Avignon, and Spain starts building northeastward
2008: From London to Madrid with an Avignon-Barcelona gap
2015: The gap should shrink to Montpellier-Perpignan

Starting data (source: Wikipedia)
London:
- High Speed 1: 37 km, 14 Nov 2007
Ebbsfleet, North Kent:
- High Speed 1: 72 km, 28 Sep 2003
- Chunnel: 50 km, 6 May 1994
- LGV Nord: ~302 km, 1993
- (Paris) LGV Interconnexion: 55 km, 1994
- LGV Sud-Est: 352 km, 27 Sep 1981
Lyon
- LGV Rhône-Alpes: 115 km, 3 Jul 1994
Valence
- LGV Méditerranée: 123 km, 7 Jun 2001
Avignon-Nîmes
- Bypass: 71 km, 2015?
Montpellier
- (no LGV plans): 160 km
Perpignan
- P-F Line, 27 km, 2012
Figueres
- M-B Line, ~139 km, 2012
Barcelona
- M-B Line, 100 km, 20 Feb 2008
Tarragona
- M-B Line, 78 km, 8 Dec 2006
Lleida
- M-B Line, 442 km, 11 Oct 2003
Madrid

Sleeper trains through the Tunnel have to conform to special safety restrictions. A fleet of such trains was designed and built and then someone decided they would never pay their way and so the service never started. After storing the trains for several years they were sold to Canada.

I think the real problem may have been the British Home Office, notoriously extremely cautious on all immigration matters.

That disposes of the possibility of sleepers from Britain. I did look forward to such journeys as a sleeper from Birmingham to Geneva but this will never be.

High Speed sleepers in the Schengen zone? Possibly, but I think it is generally thought that daytime high speed has killed off the long distance sleeper market.

Over at Eurail's railroad-map page, there is a nice little map that shows typical present-day travel times:

For the east route:
London - 2:30 - Paris - 1:55 - Lyon - 1:40 - Marseille - 8:40 - Barcelona - 4:00 - Madrid
18h 45m
All but Marseille-Barcelona and the Chunnel is HSR lines: 10h 5m
Assuming a high-speed Avignon-Barcelona line (1h 30m) and removing Avignon-Marseille (30m) gives 1h added, or about 11h.

For the west route:
London - 2:30 - Paris - 3:00 - Bordeaux - 11:00 - Madrid
16h 30m
A high-speed Paris - Bordeaux - Madrid line will likely make this route faster than the east route.

So my earlier estimates were rather optimistic.


For US comparisons, consider Amtrak's Silver Celestials (Star and Meteor). They run between NYC and Miami, over a rail distance of 1389 mi / 2235 km
By comparison, the NYC-Miami I-95 highway distance is 1286 mi / 2070 km

The Silver Meteor takes about 27 hours and the Silver Star 31 hours to make that trip, though the two trains take different routes through the Carolinas.