Hey folks, welcome back to the channel! Today we have our most requested high speed rail
explained yet, France. France was the first country in Europe with true high speed rail
and it has a large network of high speed lines connecting it as well as neighboring countries.
France’s high speed rail development has been incredibly successful and
influential and is making waves to this day. Let’s break it down.
During the 60’s and 70’s France was working aggressively to expand its
technological capabilities and with the Shinkansen opening in the mid 1960’s
high speed rail featured prominently in these plans.
The iconic brand of TGV
(train grande vitesse or very fast train) began with not electric traction but with gas turbines.
As it was though, the oil crisis struck a few years into project development
and with the massive influx of new nuclear power generation onto the French power grid
electric traction - already being used on the Shinkansen was the decided on.
The first LGV or high speed line, the LGV Sud-Est, opened in 1981 between Paris and Lyon,
though as you probably expect high speed tracks ended on the city’s outskirts at the time,
this works well given France’s centralization around Paris.
This was actually several years after the start of operation of the British Intercity 125
but trains were faster and used electric traction as opposed to their British equivalents.
The opening of the first line set everything in motion, the trains
were highly successful and the network continued to grow rapidly for decades.
In 1990 a new LGV opened between Paris and Tours as well as Le Mans.
In 1992 an LGV opened from North of Lyon to Valence.
Then the next year in 1993 an LGV North to Calais opened across the English Channel from Dover.
The final expansion of the 20th century saw a new connection built between the original LGV
and the LGV Nord East of Paris, allowing for more flexibility and for trains to bypass Paris.
This line also brought the TGV to Charles de Gaulle airport,
one of the earliest and most influential modal
connections between high speed rail and air travel,
it also brough high speed rail directly to Disneyland Paris,
still the only resort with a direct high speed rail connection.
Of course, in 1994 the Channel Tunnel opened and Eurostar Service which is majority owned by SNCF,
though I would like to point out to my viewers that CDPQ,
builders of the Montreal REM own 30% of the company.
While I will leave detailed discussion of HS1 to a future video on high speed rail in the UK,
suffice to say the line was built with French LGV standards and uses French cab signalling.
In 1997 the LGV Nord also got connected up to Brussels
and Amsterdam, which Eurostar trains also serve now.
In 2001 the TGV network finally reached the Mediterranean Sea
extending the existing line to Valence all the way to Marseille.
In 2007 a new LGV travelling East from Paris to just north of Nancy
opened on the way to Strasbourg.
In 2010 the line to Figueres in Spain from Perpignan opened,
allowing high speed rail service across the border.
In 2011 a new LGV opened between Dijon and Mulhouse.
Then roughly 5 years later the LGV was extended from Tours to Bordeaux in the South of France,
and from Le Mans to Rennes, and the LGV East from Paris now reaches the outskirts of Strasbourg.
At the end of 2017 the line to Montpellier was extended further
towards the Spanish border though it is yet to carry true high speed services.
This is the TGV network as it is today, but things aren’t standing still.
A new high speed line is currently being built between Lyon and Turin in Italy
which will provide a high quality link between the respective high speed rail networks,
the network contains a significant new base tunnel which will be 50
kilometers long and which will carry both passenger and freight traffic.
Of course there are a number of projects in planning as well which I’ll discuss now.
First is a full high speed line from Montpellier to Perpignan.
Second is an extension of the line to Bordeaux to Toulouse.
Third, is an extension of the LGV Sud Atlantique from Poitiers to Limoges.
Fourth is a line from Marseille to Nice which has been toned down from a true LGV
into a more modest upgrade program.
Fifth is another extension of the Sud Atlantique to the Spanish border,
set to create a second high speed route between France and Spain.
Sixth is the conversion of the Lyon, Dijon, Mulhouse infrastructure to fully high speed.
Seventh is a new semi high speed line to Normandy as well as some expanded
services and infrastructure in La Defense, Paris’ business hub.
Eighth is the extension of the line between Bordeaux and Toulouse to Narbonne.
Ninth is a new more direct LGV between Paris and Calais bypassing Lille.
The tenth and biggest major planned project
is a new redundant route between Paris and Lyon via Orleans.
Before we get into other elements of French high speed rail,
I think it's worth addressing the topology of the French high speed rail network.
As I mentioned in my previous German high speed rail network,
France has less of a mesh and more of a radial network but, as you’ve seen things are changing.
Over time Lyon is gaining more and more connections which is
allowing it to begin to become a hub in the way previously only Paris was.
It’s also worth pointing out the high speed lines in France are continuous
with lots of bypasses and there are a lot of non-stop trains,
this leads to much faster travel times for similar distances to Germany.
With regard to ticket prices, TGV services tend to be quite affordable, and this was a choice
from the beginning, instead of operating slower services in Parallel as in Germany.
TGV fares were set at parity with conventional service.
A trip from Paris to Lyon ranges between 50 and 150 dollars,
however in an innovative step in 2013 a low cost carrier - OuiGo was introduced.
OuiGo has been quite disruptive, as passengers can get tickets on routes like Paris - Lyon for
less than 30 dollars and as little as 10 for children. This is achieved through a
number of efficiency measures. Trains are bilevel and 100% second class and none are
new they have all been converted, they tend to use less busy suburban stations.
instead of downtown terminals,
trains operate more intensive schedules, and overhead is kept to a minimum.
OuiGo’s success has seen it expand to offer more services
and inspire other services like the forthcoming Avlo in Spain.
The TGV network also interconnects substantially
with services travelling into a variety of other countries, often with joint operators.
For example Eurostar services to the UK,
Thalys services to Belgium and the Netherlands,
Alleo services into Germany (though the Alleo
brand isn’t used passengers are riding an ICE or a TGV),
Renfe-SNCF which operates services between Spain and France,
and Lyria which operates services into Switzerland.
Of course many of these services travel substantial distances
off of high speed lines, particularly those travelling to Switzerland.
Cumulative ridership on TGV now branded InOui and OuiGo has well
exceeded 2 billion riders and over 120 millions more riders are carried every
year. This has massively changed the domestic travel market in the country.
Perhaps the greatest success, and most interesting part of TGV is the rolling
stock. As mentioned earlier the TGV started with gas turbine designs, but has now become
the default loco hauled high speed train design used in most of the world, and have also become
iconic for their universal use of Jacobs bogies which are bogies shared between two cars.
First we have the original iconic Orange TGV Sud Est sets retired last year,
and the La Poste Mail train sets which were used until just a few years ago.
Next we have the mostly similar looking TGV Reseau and Atlantique.
Then we have the TGV Duplex which as you’d expect is the bilevel variant.
Up next is the TGV POS which takes the Reseau style carriages and marries them
with a Duplex style set of power cars, this actually came out of an order mix up.
And then there is the EuroDuplex which is designed for use on lines enabled with ERTMS.
Truth be told though, only part of the story can be told in France, as perhaps more than
any other country France has been wildly successful in exporting it’s high speed rail
technology meaning that TGV based trains operate in countries around the world.
Starting with trains operating nearby, both Thalys and Ave
use stock fundamentally based on TGV models.
In addition NTV in Italy operates Alstom AGV trains which have come
out of the Avelia line used on the TGV, these are unique as they are multiple units,
something which are not used for high speed rail services within France.
Of course Eurostar previously used TGV based trains in the British Rail Class 373,
which is quite unique in that it was equipped with third rail pickups for
operation into London Waterloo, a one of a kind feature for a high speed train.
Since 2015 the Eurostar has started using Siemens Velaro EMUs,
the old trains have since been renamed the E300.
TGV technology was also exported to Korea as
mentioned in our most recent high speed rail explained,
And the technology was used jointly with Bombardier to
develop the Acela trains used on the US Northeast corridor,
albeit these trains were required to be much heavier due to FRA regulations.
The new Avelia Liberty trains purchased for use on the Northeast corridor can give us a
taste of what future TGV models will look like, most notably the on order Avelia Horizon sets.
Finally, there is the Al Boraq, the Morrocan High Speed rail
service which uses TGV Euroduplex trains at speeds of up to 320kph.
And TGV technology has also been responsible for a number of records,
the fastest non electric train was the early Gas Turbine test train, and a modified TGV
duplex train holds the world record for a train travelling on conventional tracks
with a top speed of 574kph Achieved.
With all this it’s clear that France is probably
the most influential country in the Western world for high speed rail.
From the first high speed electric loco hauled
trains, to the first high speed services in an undersea tunnel,
to an incredibly popular line of rolling stock France has transformed the world through high
speed rail and the future is bright. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!