Berlin/Frankfurt/Main (dpa/lhe) - When the timetable changes on December 11, trains of the latest ICE generation will run on the ICE express route between Cologne and the Rhine-Main area for the first time. The ICE3neo trains will run several times a day between Cologne and Frankfurt and on the Cologne-Wiesbaden-Mainz and Dortmund/Cologne-Stuttgart-Munich connections, as Deutsche Bahn announced on Monday.
The latest ICE variant can travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour and has more doors. According to the railways, it offers, among other things, more space for families, more space for luggage as well as tablet holders and coat hooks at every seat.
The travel time for train passengers from Frankfurt to Ulm, Augsburg or Munich will be reduced by a quarter of an hour. This is made possible primarily by the completion of the new Wendlingen-Ulm line, which along with Stuttgart 21 is part of the Stuttgart-Ulm railway project. According to the current timetable, an ICE currently takes around 2 hours and 20 minutes from Frankfurt to Ulm.
The long-distance transport director of Deutsche Bahn, Michael Peterson, announced, among other things, that in future a direct connection between Cologne and Munich would be offered twice an hour. There should also be more connections to Frankfurt Airport, especially from cities in the north. "The Basel-Cologne-Dortmund ICE line will be extended to Hamburg, which will further improve the quality of the axis between the cathedral city and the Hanseatic city," said the railway.
Between Cologne-Deutz and Frankfurt Airport, several trains should also be up to 15 minutes faster on the Munich-Nuremberg-Frankfurt-Cologne Messe/Deutz-Essen connection, as they no longer stop as often in Limburg, Montabaur or Siegburg/Bonn keep. For this, the cities in other ICE connections are taken into account.
One of the new features is a night train connection from Frankfurt (from 0.52 a.m.) via Dresden to Prague (arrival at 9.35 a.m.). Between 26 May and 10 September 2023, Deutsche Bahn is also offering a direct ICE connection from Hamburg via Kassel, Marburg, Frankfurt and Darmstadt to Constance on Fridays (departure from Frankfurt at 3:20 p.m.) and Saturdays (departure from Frankfurt at 1:20 p.m.). Lake Constance. In the opposite direction, trains depart from Constance on Saturdays (11:48 a.m.) and Sundays (1:48 p.m.).
Long-distance rail travel will increase by an average of almost five percent from mid-December. The prices for Bahncards 25, 50 and 100 are also increasing.
On December 11th, the timetables for regional rail transport will also change. The Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV) announced that it would provide information about the most important changes before the date. However, a specific date for this has not yet been set.
