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Strasbourg, France

Traveling by train to this city that is home to the European Parliament takes so long that even the boss of France's national rail company prefers flying.

With the arrival of a high-speed train this Sunday, the plane trip will no longer be necessary: The new TGV service will cut the train journey between Paris and this Alsatian city in eastern France by nearly half — to two hours and 20 minutes.

Trains on the new 252-mile line reaching Strasbourg via Reims, Metz and Nancy are expected to travel at speeds of up to 199 mph, compared with a maximum of 186 mph for current TGV trains.

The line will also greatly cut travel time from Paris to such places as Frankfurt and Stuttgart in Germany and Zurich, Switzerland, making trains a real alternative to flying.

For Strasbourg, the TGV is bringing hopes for more tourists, better business opportunities and a possible development boom.

"TGV is the talk of the town, and everybody is waiting [to see] what it will do to the prices. So far we haven't registered a major increase, but let's wait for the trains to roll in," said Florent Fischer, an agent at the Foncia real estate agency.

Seeking to improve access to Strasbourg, which also is the seat of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union, included the French TGV Est line among its priority transportation projects in 1994.

The new line is part of what planners foresee as a network of high-speed railways stretching from Barcelona in northeastern Spain to Budapest in Hungary. Plans are to create two high-speed axes that meet in Strasbourg: one running between Paris, Munich, Vienna and Budapest, the other linking Hamburg, Frankfurt, Lyon and Barcelona.

The EU has earmarked $27.5 billion to finance trans-European rail networks, much of it to five priority transcontinental links that are due to be completed by 2015.

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