France’s High-speed Trains Just Got A Makeover That Will Give U.S. Travelers FOMO

Source: Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: Alstrom

The fifth generation TGV Inoui is both beautiful and high-tech—and it’s making us wish America would embrace a rail travel renaissance already.

France just unveiled its charming new TGV Inoui trains, and they’re a jealousy-inducing reminder that America’s rail travel renaissance can’t come fast enough.

The TGV Inoui is a high-speed rail system, running at around 200 miles per hour, that connects France’s major cities as well as providing connections into Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. This Tuesday, the manufacturing company Alstom and the TGV’s operator, SNCF Voyageurs, revealed the brand-new fifth generation TGV Inoui interior design at Paris’s Gare de Lyon.

The new train, which is slated to hit the rails in 2026, includes a delightfully colorful aesthetic, an ultra-sleek bar car, and expanded accommodations for wheelchair users—and its further proof that, for now, America’s rail system might as well be in the dark ages.

According to Alstom, a team of more than 2,000 designers started entirely from scratch to create the new TGV Inoui cars, which are constructed in a modular format that allows them to be reconfigured in less than a day to suit the particular needs of each trip. The trains are made from 97% recyclable materials, have a 20% higher seating capacity than previous iterations (up to 740 passengers), and are 20% more energy-efficient than the fourth generation trains.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91297387/frances-high-speed-trains-tgv-makeover