France’s high-speed trains just got a makeover that will give U.S. travelers FOMO
France just unveiled its charming new TGV Inoui trains, and they’re a jealousy-inducing reminder that America’s rail travel renaissance can’t come fast enough.
The TGV Inoui is a high-speed rail system, running at around 200 miles per hour, that connects France’s major cities as well as providing connections into Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. This Tuesday, the manufacturing company Alstom and the TGV’s operator, SNCF Voyageurs, revealed the brand-new fifth generation TGV Inoui interior design at Paris’s Gare de Lyon.
The new train, which is slated to hit the rails in 2026, includes a delightfully colorful aesthetic, an ultra-sleek bar car, and expanded accommodations for wheelchair users—and its further proof that, for now, America’s rail system might as well be in the dark ages.
An interior fit for a ’70s space age mood board
According to Alstom, a team of more than 2,000 designers started entirely from scratch to create the new TGV Inoui cars, which are constructed in a modular format that allows them to be reconfigured in less than a day to suit the particular needs of each trip. The trains are made from 97% recyclable materials, have a 20% higher seating capacity than previous iterations (up to 740 passengers), and are 20% more energy-efficient than the fourth generation trains.
While most trains tend to incorporate a monochromatic palette of gray or blue, the TGV Inoui cars are a fun experiment in color and shape. Designed by the French agency AREP and Japanese design firm Nendo, the cars feature a soft palette of primary red, blue, and yellow hues accented by rounded shapes. The combination of these comforting colors with the train’s sleek metallic fixtures lends the whole interior a kind of ‘70s space-age aesthetic.
According to a press release, the designers used the concept of “flow” as a guiding principle, looking to water currents in nature to inform the placement of furniture and colors.
“[The train] makes its way through the landscape, rather like the flow of a river,” the release reads. “The designers played with the idea of depth inside, with a strong horizon line running through all the elements and giving the impression of the surface of water. The flow is inspired by the soft shapes of pebbles and objects polished by water, which can be seen in the details of the seats and the lamp, as well as the use of darker materials in the lower section and lighter ones above.”
One of those polished details—the table lamp—has been a constant fixture in all past TGV train designs, but AREP and Nendo have taken it up a notch. In the new cars, the lamps are the brightest element of the whole interior, rendered in a crisp canary yellow that’s meant to serve as “a touch of humor” in every room.
The bathrooms have been enlarged and touched up with a frosted window that lets in natural light. Shockingly large stairwells allow passengers to pass easily from the first to second floor. The bar car has been expanded to take up two stories, with a self-service grocery section (including full-size drink coolers) on the bottom floor, and an upstairs bistro space with booth-like seats for passengers to enjoy their meals.
And, for the first time ever, the train now incorporates a boarding platform that allows wheelchair users to enter the space autonomously, as well as adding more accessible seating options and signage. It’s a design approach that goes beyond maximizing square footage to consider the travel experience of all riders.
Why can’t we have this in the U.S.?
While French citizens are enjoying the new TGV designs, American Twitter is busy lamenting the lack of similar transit options in the U.S.
Under a tweet showcasing the new train cars, one user wrote, “Trains would be the elite form of public transit in the US if they were fast,” to which the original poster responded, “sad state of things for the country that was literally built by railroad.”
As France moves on to its fifth generation of high-speed trains and, Japan has also added yet another innovative bullet train to its already advanced arsenal. The U.S. has yet to truly embark on building high-speed rail infrastructure. The closest we’ve come is Amtrak’s Acela route in the Northeast, which still travels at only 160 miles per hour. Most other Amtrak trains don’t move much faster than the average car.
To be fair, we are getting a bit closer to embracing passenger rail travel. Amtrak had a record-breaking year in 2024, moving an all-time high of 32.8 million riders between October 2023 and September 2024. The company is aiming to double its ridership to 66 million by 2024 through building new routes, updating some of its fleet with faster trains, and modernizing its amenities. Meanwhile, the private rail service Brightline has gained popularity in Florida and is currently constructing a line between Las Vegas and L.A., which is slated to become the country’s first truly high speed railway.
Even with these advances, the U.S. is still light-years behind countries like France, Japan, Switzerland, and China. For now, we’ll have to content ourselves with gazing longingly at the TGV Inoui and dreaming of a cross-country train trip that doesn’t take 96 hours.