The letter from transport minister Clément Beaune to the president of the SNCF at the end of May will obviously not change anything. The future Paris-Berlin TGV line will “probably” not pass through Strasbourg, German public operator Deutsche Bahn said on Thursday, citing an “agreement” with SNCF. And this despite the protests of elected officials from the city and the neighboring German municipality of Karlsruhe.
“For a rapid realization of the new direct Paris-Berlin link, SNCF and Deutsche Bahn have agreed to first study the connection of the existing Paris-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Berlin lines,” said a porter. word of the German group. The future TGV will therefore run “probably via Saarbrücken”, a German city located further north, rather than via Strasbourg and Karlsruhe, he added. Asked, the SNCF did not wish to comment.
Towards “an incomprehensible and incoherent route”?
Paris and Berlin are to be linked by a new night train in December 2023 and by a new TGV line at the end of 2024, but the route of the latter has been the subject of much debate in recent months. The town halls of Strasbourg and the neighboring German city of Karlsruhe, as well as several deputies and elected officials from the two border regions, expressed in an open letter at the end of May their concerns that the future TGV line would escape them.
“Another choice of route is incomprehensible and incoherent”, declared Jeanne Barseghian, EELV mayor of Strasbourg, Franck Mentrup, his counterpart from Karlsruhe, and more than twenty local elected officials, highlighting the European dimension of the city. . The entourage of the French Minister of Transport Clément Beaune indicated that “the priority of the minister and the government remains a passage through Strasbourg”, specifying that “it is the request which was clearly expressed to the SNCF”.
No final decision yet
Deutsche Bahn has defended the route via Saarbrücken from the start, arguing that the future night train “would pass through Strasbourg” and that “two thirds of French long-distance trains” already crossed the border by this route.
However, no final decision has yet been taken, says Deutsche Bahn. After a meeting on Wednesday with the CEO of the SNCF Jean-Pierre Farandou, the town hall of Strasbourg also assured Thursday in a press release that the possibility of a Paris-Strasbourg-Berlin link remained “open, since the whole stakeholders […] manage to define the modalities of its implementation”.
The mayor of Metz, a neighboring city of Sarrebrück, the ex-LR François Grosdidier, welcomed in a press release the prospect of a TGV passing through his lands, welcoming “positive” news which “will help to strengthen the network of transport and the opportunities for intermodality in the region”.
There is currently no direct train between Paris and Berlin. It takes more than eight hours to reach the two cities with at least one change.