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Comment by benterris | Hacker News Reader

French high speed trains are fast, for instance the average speed of the train on the Paris-Strasbourg section (~400km in length) is 250km/h. This is the global average speed, so it is even faster on the high-speed section, going at around 320km/h. I often take this train, which is very convenient.

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To emphasize just how fast this is in comparison to regular rail:

When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew.

If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.)

There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.

I took the TER from Strasbourg to Paris just weeks ago (just 2 3rds of the distance for me because I was not in Strasbourg). It travels well over 100 km/h all the time and it makes only a few stops. That is only half or even less of the TGVs' speed, but still faster than by car. Definitely not crawling.

As I mentioned -- it's not actually slow in absolute terms! The experience is lodged in my mind because it took so much more time than the reverse trip, and it was sweltering to be stuck on a train with inadequate air conditioning on a rather hot summer day.

There are of course many benefits to taking even the TER over driving the equivalent distance: you don't have to be laser-focused on driving (especially in a foreign country where you might not speak / read the language or necessarily know the rules of the road), you don't have variation in travel times due to traffic (which, by driving, you would only contribute to), reduced per-passenger emissions, and so forth.

Some information online indicates that the non high speed train takes about 20 mins more than the high speed train on that route. It does not seem a huge time difference

The connection that takes 20min longer has two additional stops (the fast connection is a direct one) but it is still served by TGV or ICE trains, like the direct connection.

The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.

This reminds me of Voyager buses in Ontario during the 80s/90s. They had two routes between Ottawa and Toronto.

One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town.

Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter...

I recall this being named the "milk run".

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