A start date has been agreed for the long-awaited direct train linking Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport with the city.
Plans for the Charles de Gaulle Express – a fast, direct train taking airport passengers straight into the city centre – have been on the card for some time.
But with work on the new link now reaching the final stages, a start date has been announced – Sunday, March 28th, 2027.
The new train link will run between Terminal 2 of the airport and Paris’ Gare de l’Est station – which will be linked to nearby Gare du Nord, home of the Eurostar, with an underground pedestrian tunnel. The tunnel, with travellators, is also scheduled to open in March 2027.
The Charles de Gaulle Express will run every 15 minutes, seven days a week from 5 am to midnight. Each train will have a capacity of 420 passengers, and will take just 20 minutes, in contrast to roughly 50 minutes on the RER B train line.
There is controversy over the price, however, as a single ticket will be €24, and it remains unclear whether there will be discounts for children or Navigo travel pass holders.
Locals, or people who don’t want to spend €24, will still be able to take RER B to the airport, arriving at Terminal 1.
Divided trains
The story of the Charles de Gaulle express has been a long and complicated one – with dispute settling on whether to create an entirely new line for the airport train, or whether to improve the RER B line.
At present, train passengers use RER B, part of the suburban rail network that links Paris to its suburbs. It is frequently criticised for being slow, overcrowded, and prone to breakdowns and technical errors.
But critics say that this experience is common for RER users all over the city, and improving RER B would have benefited both tourists and locals who live in the suburbs near the airport.
The decision was eventually made to instead create a new line aimed at tourists that provided a fast and direct link to the airport – although work on the lines had to be suspended in 2024 to ensure that Olympic visitors were not disrupted.
Since then, RER B has seen regular scheduled line closures as work is completed on the new route – the next planned closures are over the Pentecost weekend of May 23rd, 24th and 25th, to allow for signals testing.
The RoissyBus shuttle service, a direct shuttle bus between Opéra and Charles de Gaulle airport, has recently been scrapped due to a combination of falling passenger numbers and a desire to keep vehicles out of the city centre.
