Austrian rail operator ÖBB this week launched a new high-speed connection between Vienna and Trieste, in northeast Italy.
The new daily service, operated by ÖBB’s Railjet trains, will "significantly" reduce travel time between the two cities to six hours and 38 minutes, instead of nine hours and 18 minutes.
The service departs Vienna Central Station at 6:53am, calling at Graz and Klagenfurt before arriving at Trieste at 1:31pm.
Meanwhile, services from Trieste depart at 2:22pm between Monday and Friday, and at 2:37pm on Saturday and Sunday, with a scheduled daily arrival in Vienna at 9:07pm.
The new connection follows the opening on Sunday (14 December) of the 130-kilometre-long Koralm Railway, which connects Graz and Klagenfurt. The high-speed link reduces travel time between these two cities to 45 minutes (down from three hours) by cutting through the new 33-kilometre-long Koralm Tunnel in Austria’s Kolralpe mountains.
The high-speed link has also reduced travel time on routes from Vienna to Venice by 30 minutes, with the journey now taking seven hours and 10 minutes instead of seven hours and 40 minutes.
“The opening of the Koralm Railway marks the beginning of a new era in rail travel. We are not only increasing the number of services on the rail network, but also significantly reducing travel times: Trieste can be reached from Vienna in just 6 hours and 38 minutes, bringing Italy and Austria even closer together,” said ÖBB’s head of long-distance passenger services, Kurt Bauer.
ÖBB has also increased services between Vienna and Graz to 33 times daily (instead of 18), while connections between Graz and Klagenfurt have increased to 29 times daily (instead of the previous 8 by bus), and links from Vienna to Klagenfurt have increased from 10 to 26 times.