Train Travel

The French parliamentarians voted by a majority for a ban on domestic flights on routes that can be covered by train in less than two and a half hours. Flights from Paris to Lyon or Bordeaux could thus soon be a thing of the past.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire had already voiced such ideas in May 2020, when state aid for AirFrance-KLM was decided. The weekend's vote picks up on these plans and aims to help reduce CO₂ emissions permanently - even if the air travel industry picks up again after the global pandemic. The ban is part of a broader climate law that aims to reduce French carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

A collision between two passenger trains in central Egypt on Friday left at least 32 people dead, the Egyptian health ministry announced. Dozens of ambulances raced to the crash scene in the Tahta district of Sohag province, around 460 kilometres south of the capital Cairo.

"The trains collided while going at not very high speeds, which led to the destruction of two carriages and a third to overturn," a security source told Reuters.

Deutsche Bahn has published its new timetable, which comes into effect on the 13th of December. The company intends to offer 13,000 additional seats by the end of the year by expanding its train fleet. Among other things, the long-distance trains will then run between Hamburg and Berlin at 30-minute intervals. From June 13, 2021, the railroad plans to deploy its XXL-ICE with 918 seats on the Hamburg-Frankfurt-Basel-Zurich-Chur route for the first time.