French engineer Systra has won a nine-year contract on France’s biggest high-speed rail project: a 400km-long, Y-shaped line running south from Bordeaux and splitting to go southwest to the town of Dax and southeast to Toulouse.

The €14bn first phase of the “Grand Projet Ferroviaire du Sud-Ouest” (GPSO) extends the Tours-Bordeaux high-speed route that opened in 2017.

By 2032, when it’s scheduled to be operating, the GPSO will cut travel times between the major cities in France’s southwest amid population growth in the Occitanie and Nouvelle-Aquitaine regions.

It’ll cut an hour off the 4h10 trip from Paris to Toulouse, and nearly an hour off the 2h01 journey between Bordeaux and Toulouse.

A later phase will extend the eastern and western legs into Spain’s Catalonia and Basque regions, cutting an hour off the 4h50 ride between Bordeaux and Barcelona, Systra notes.

The French State and 25 local authorities in Occitanie and Nouvelle-Aquitaine will split the €14bn cost of the first phase 40:40, with the EU chipping in the remaining 20%, says the prefect of Occitanie region, the megaproject’s coordinator

The GPSO has been declared a public utility project.

Systra will act as the general and technical project management assistant on behalf of French state rail operator SNCF.

France’s high-speed line was sabotaged by a coordinated attack in July 2024 ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony.