Road
Bordeaux is an important road and motorway junction. The city is connected to Paris by the A10 motorway, with Lyon by the A89, with Toulouse by the A62, and with Spain by the A63. There is a 45 km (28 mi) ring road called the "Rocade" which is often very busy. Another ring road is under consideration.
Bordeaux has four road bridges that cross the Garonne, the Pont de pierre built in the 1820s and three modern bridges built after 1960: the Pont Saint Jean, just south of the Pont de pierre (both located downtown), the Pont d'Aquitaine, a suspended bridge downstream from downtown, and the Pont François Mitterrand, located upstream of downtown. These two bridges are part of the ring road around Bordeaux. There is also a railway bridge, completed in 2008.
Rail
The main railway station, Gare de Bordeaux Saint-Jean, near the centre of the city, has 4 million passengers a year. It is served by the French national (SNCF) railway's high speed train, the TGV, that gets to Paris in three hours, with connections to major European centres such as Lille, Brussels,Amsterdam, Cologne, Geneva and London. The TGV also serves Toulouse and Irun from Bordeaux. A regular train service is provided to Nantes, Nice,Marseille and Lyon. The Gare Saint-Jean is the major hub for regional trains (TER) operated by the SNCF to Arcachon, Limoges, Agen, PĂ©rigueux, Pauand Bayonne.
Historically the train line used to terminate at a station on the right bank of the river Garonne near the Pont de Pierre, and passengers crossed the bridge to get into the city. Subsequently a single track steel railway bridge was constructed in the 1850s, by Gustave Eiffel, to bring trains across the river direct into Gare de Bordeaux Saint-Jean. The old station was later converted and in 2010 comprised a cinema and restaurants.
The single track Eiffel bridge became a bottleneck and a new bridge was built, opening in 2008(??). During the planning there was
