The route for a direct connection between Berlin and Paris leads to problems. France’s transport minister has now commented on this.
France’s Deputy Transport Minister Clément Beaune has become involved in the dispute over the route of the planned new express train between Berlin and Paris. In a letter to the French railway company SNCF, he called for the direct train to be reconsidered via Strasbourg and Karlsruhe, as his team confirmed today.
“I was recently informed that the preferred connection is via Saarbrücken because there are not enough routes in the German network or in the Frankfurt train station,” the letter said on Wednesday. However, the technical information he had was not sufficient to justify that a journey via Strasbourg was impossible.
Beaune emphasized that Strasbourg, as the European capital, is essential for France and for Franco-German relations. Strasbourg in Alsace is the seat of the European Parliament.
Only recently, German and French town hall heads and parliamentarians called for the planned express train to be routed through the Upper Rhine region. The route via Karlsruhe and Strasbourg is crucial for the development of a rail network in the service of Europe, it said in a joint letter.
The letter was written by the Mayor of Karlsruhe, Frank Mentrup (SPD), his colleague from Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, and other officials from both countries. It is addressed to Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) and Beaune, among others. Beaune now also indicated that he wanted to turn to Wissing.
A year ago, Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the French state railway SNCF announced that they were planning a fast direct connection between Berlin and Paris. According to announcements at the time, the connection was scheduled to start at the end of 2023 or in the course of the coming year. The travel time should therefore be around seven hours.
Source: Stern
