The new Paris-Marseille link cost $3.25 billion and took 12 years to complete, including seven years of research. It has been dubbed the TGV Med, from the French for high-speed train -- Train a Grande Vitesse.  The trains inaugural run was filled with journalists and officials. After pulling out of the Gare de Lyon and it was cruising toward France's southern beaches at 186 mph.

But the new link is not just a gimmick for sun-starved northerners. It is also a key step toward building an ambitious Europe-wide high-speed rail network.

Public services on the new link start Sunday. Already 100,000 people have made reservations for the week of June 11 and 550,000 travelers are scheduled to make the journey before August -- a rise of 40 percent.

"It's an extraordinary feat," Transportation Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot told LCI television on Thursday.

The minister said the new link would boost passenger numbers for the state-owned rail operator SNCF from 18 million to 24 million a year.

Before the new high-speed link was built, it took 4 hours and 20 minutes to cover the 465 miles between Paris and France's second-largest city on the Cote d'Azur.

More high-speed links to come

The French pride themselves on a quick and efficient rail network, and already have high-speed links with other cities, including the Eurostar to London.

They expect to build more high-speed links with neighboring countries over the coming decades, providing Europe with a fluid network of cross-border trains.

A high-speed link to Strasbourg on the border with Germany is expected to be running by 2006, bringing the eastern city to within 2 hours 20 minutes of Paris. An under-the-Alps link between the central French city of Lyon and the northern Italian city of Turin is expected to be ready in 20 years. Other high-speed links planned include a link via Perpignan through the Pyrnees to Barcelona in northern Spain.

But the TGV Med is a key part of the network because it opens up French cities to other major European cities, via the link with Paris.

This latest engineering triumph is also promising to boost the economy of Mediterranean port city Marseille, and other southern towns along its route, including Avignon and Aix-en-Provence.

Since the first high-speed rail link was opened between Paris and the central city of Lyon in 1981, rail travel has flourished in France. Then, it took 6 hours and 40 minutes to cover the 465 miles between Paris and Marseille, long viewed as a provincial cousin to Paris, and a gathering place for mostly poor immigrants from North Africa.

Now, 155 miles of extra track have been laid between Valence and Avignon, where the line branches in two, with one track heading to Nimes and the other to Marseille.

Five hundred bridges and 20 viaducts were built between Valence and Marseille, during 100 million worker hours. One million trees were planted to meet environmental regulations.

The trains, too, have been given a makeover. New double-decker carriages, boasting a blue-and-silver color scheme, will be added to the stock by 2004.

The trains running on the new line will also be faster -- cruising at 186 mph compared to 167 previously.

There will be 17 daily trains, and the price of a Paris-Marseille ticket in economy class is $65.

The state-owned rail operator SNCF hopes the new link will attract six million new passengers over three years.