High-speed Brussels-Strasbourg train by 2016

A new high-speed direct rail link between Brussels and Strasbourg will come into service in the spring of 2016, the French rail authority SNCF has announced.

The train will travel twice a day in each direction, via Lille and Paris Charles De Gaulle airport in a trip lasting three hours and 40 minutes. At present there is no direct high-speed link between the two cities, both of which host the European Parliament (pictured), other than a single trip chartered by the parliament itself.

The parliament moves to Strasbourg for one week every month and MEPs have complained of the lack of such a link.

Currently, the only link between Brussels and Strasbourg is an ordinary train that travels twice a day and takes five hours, passing through Luxembourg. Earlier this year a decision not to modernise the Brussels-Luxembourg-Basel line was taken by the three rail authorities concerned, which is thought to have influenced the SNCF’s move.

Photo: King/Wikimedia Commons