High-speed route
TGV Lyria
Paris → Geneva · France · Switzerland
TGV Lyria in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 500 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 8 min
- Average speed
- 160 km/h
- Top speed
- 320 km/h
- Operator
- Lyria
- Train
- Euroduplex (TGV 2N2)
- Countries
- France, Switzerland
- In service since
- 1981
- Runs
- ≈ 8× daily each way
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
A Lyria Euroduplex glides from Paris into Switzerland at Genève-Cornavin; the 2010 Haut-Bugey line trimmed the run to about three hours.
Lyria’s Geneva run starts as a standard 320 km/h Burgundy sprint and ends as a Jura mountain railway: the reopened Haut-Bugey line, rebuilt for TGVs in 2010, climbing through gorges and limestone shelf country to shortcut the old route. The Rhône is joined at Bellegarde, squeezed through the Fort l’Écluse defile where the river breaks the Jura wall, and then the basin opens: vineyards, the lake, and the Jet d’Eau pluming beyond Geneva’s platforms. Just over three hours, Swiss dining car included.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 3093216 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 35 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 12 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Lyria — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Burgundy at full line speed
- Bresse farmland
- Haut-Bugey gorges
- Fort l’Écluse defile
- Lake Geneva basin arrival
More high-speed routes
- Eurostar
Drops 75 m below the sea through the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel, 37.9 km of it under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any rail tunnel.
Wikipedia ↗ - TGV inOui
France’s original 1981 LGV forms the first leg; today the TGV holds 320 km/h nearly all the way to the Mediterranean.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Scheduled at 310 km/h, Europe’s fastest timetable, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Spain’s first AVE, built for Expo ’92 in standard gauge, the line that reset Spanish railways.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in France · Switzerland.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Geneva → Paris · Paris → Geneva.