page_title: Saint Petersburg
section_title: Rail
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Petersburg / Transport / Saint Petersburg public transportation statistics / Rail
caption_attribution_description: English: A Sapsan (Siemens Velaro Rus) train en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg Français&#160;: Un Sapsan en route de Moscou à Saint-Pétersbourg.
context_page_description: Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd, then Leningrad, is a city situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. It is Russia's second-largest city after Moscow. With a population of roughly 5.4 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the northernmost metropolis in Europe and the world. As an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it is governed as a federal city.
  The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the subsequent Russian Empire from 1713 to 1918. After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.
  As one of the most important tourism centers in Russia, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018, and is considered an important economic, scientific and cultural centre of Russia.
context_section_description: The city is the final destination for a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky and Vitebsky), as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany and many former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway, built in 1870 and 443 kilometers (275 mi) long, has trains running five times a day, in a journey lasting about three and a half hours with the Allegro train.
  The Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, and is 651 kilometers (405 mi) long; the commute to Moscow now requires from three and a half to nine hours.
  In 2009 Russian Railways launched a high speed service for the Moscow–Saint Petersburg route. The new train, known as Sapsan, is a derivative of the popular Siemens Velaro train; various versions of this already operate in some European countries. It set records for the fastest train in Russia on 2 May 2009, travelling at 281 km/h (174.6 mph) and on 7 May 2009, traveling at 290 kilometers per hour (180 mph).
  Since 12 December 2010 Karelian Trains, a joint venture between Russian Railways and VR (Finnish Railways), has been running Alstom Pendolino operated high-speed services between Saint Petersburg's Finlyandsky and Helsinki's Central railway stations. These services are branded as "Allegro" trains. "Allegro" is known for suffering some big technical problems from time to time, which sometimes result in significant delays and even cancellation of tourists' trips.
caption: The Sapsan high-speed train runs between Moscow and Saint Petersburg
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