DB International : good performance to the Benelux countries and France

News by Mediarail.be - Signalling technician and railways observer

See also the Trainworld on facebook of Mediarail.be, also Twitter and LinkedIn

03/02/2016

International transport from Germany to France, Belgium and the Netherlands is on the path to success. «  We set a new record in travelers traffic in 2015 and gained market share mainly on air traffic, with nearly five million passengers on these routes, and growth of 3.5%, » says Birgit Bohle, Manager Traffic Long Distence at DBAG. On the connection Stuttgart-Paris, the train takes the lead with 66 percent market share and remains the clear market leader in front of the airliners. This growth is due to well adapted schedules. The travel from Frankfurt to Brussels takes just over 3:00, while it takes 3:50 to Paris and 4:00 to Amsterdam.

The high-speed service operated to Paris is managed by cooperation with SNCF. There is no competition on this route. In 2015, over 1.7 million passengers were accounted, representing an increase of about 1% - despite of the terrorist attacks in Paris. This year, growth will continue with the opening of the second section of the LGV East in France, scheduled on July 3, 2016. Because of the 30 minutes saved on travel time, the traffic from Frankfurt and from Stuttgart will extend to a pair of trains. The travel time Stuttgart-Paris will be reduced to 3:10, while that between Frankfurt and Paris will be shortened by about 10 minutes at 3:40. This link is indeed not affected by the new section of the LGV East because the trains travel via Saarbrücken and Mannheim.

ICE and TGV from SNCF at the station of Francfort (photo by Ting Chen via flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Belgian connection between Frankfurt and Brussels is the only one to compete with Thalys on the Brussels-Cologne section, which indicates a particular reading about the performance. DBAG has recorded approximately 780,000 cross-border travelers in 2015. Demand increased by around 1%, despite the strike by Belgian railway workers and six weeks of work during the summer with an extended time of travel of one hour. The positive trend was also driven by the growing demand for travel to London (with a change via the Eurostar in Brussels). Sales "Sparpreis Europe" to London (from 59 euros in 2nd class and 109 euros in 1st class) increased by 15% compared to last year.

 ICE Brussels-Francfort at station of Liège-Guillemins (photo by Matthew Black via flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

The International Liaison ICE Frankfurt-Cologne-Amsterdam and the Intercity link between Berlin-Hanover-Osnabrück and Amsterdam are also managed in cooperation with NS International, but only with german's rolling stock. This ensemble has recorded over 2.3 million international passengers, a remarkable increase of 7%. Since the establishment of cooperation with NS Dutch Railways in November 2000, almost 17 million international passengers traveled on routes with the ICE. This creates for the fourth time a new passenger traffic record in 2015 for all lines.

Netherland: locomotive class 1739 from NS with IC 143 (Amsterdam Centraal - Berlin Ostbahnhof) 27 Septembre 2014. Germans cars class A and Bpmz, in livery "ICE" ( photo by PatrickvH. via flickr CC BY-ND 2.0)

In a nutshell, all international DB services to France and the Benelux countries totaled 4.78 million passengers, compared with almost 7 million for Thalys and 10 million for Eurostar. This lower Rhenan flow between the leader of Europe and the major population bases of Benelux and Paris, shows perhaps an overestimation of transhumance between East and West, which was often the argument in the 80s and 90s to justify the TGV-Est in Europe. However, the German figures for this market is still above what once prevailed when the high speed did not exist, despite of the subsequent abolition of night trains.