OFF TO PARIS AT 300 KM/H

French railway company SNCF recently expanded its high-speed train network and selected WE-EF LED luminaires to provide efficient lighting in the outside areas of the newly constructed TGV train station at Belfort-Montbéliard.

The metropolis of Paris has just moved a little bit closer to Belfort, a city in eastern France. About a year ago, the city commissioned the Belfort-Montbéliard train station and with it, a new section for the TGV. With the new high-speed train, a trip to the capital city now only takes two and a half hours, and the travel time to Marseille and Lyon has also been reduced significantly. The new eastern branch of the TGV Rhin-Rhône sub-network is also important for cross-border traffic heading towards Switzerland and Germany. The French railway company SNCF has not only constructed new tracks for the trains that can travel up to 320 km/h, but has also renovated and constructed train stations along the route.

The Belfort-Montbéliard train station is one of the new stations. An important objective of the lighting designer ‘Point Lumière’ was to create a functioning interface between the train connection and its relatively large catchment area. It is expected that 1.1 million passengers will arrive by car, taxi, bus, train and bike every year. Therefore the outside areas of the train station include large short-term and long-term parking areas, bus platforms, an extended taxi zone and a bike parking area.

All of these areas are lit by WE-EF luminaires of the type RFL530 and RFL540-LED as well as RFS530-LED. The luminaires, which total 275 in number, are mounted on posts at a suspension height of five metres, above the forecourt of the train station, and also on cable-tensioning systems. Depending on the lighting task, LED luminaires featuring a luminous colour of 3000 K with [A60] lenses or [S70] lenses that have been optimised for illumination and wattages ranging from 29 W to 88 W have been used. The luminaires with their energy-efficient and long-lasting LEDs seamlessly blend into the sustainable building concept for the train station, which integrates environmentally-friendly technologies such as heat pumps for heating and cooling or rainwater and process water use.

Architects: AREP
Lighting Designers: LE POINT LUMINEUX