PARIS (Reuters) – France’s state-owned SNCF rail organisation said on Friday it was considering joining up the Eurostar and Thalys rail services to provide stronger competition to airlines.

The project, dubbed “Green Speed”, aims to increase the number of passengers per year on the combined service to 30 million by 2030, compared with 18.5 million currently.

The SNCF has majority stakes in both Eurostar and Thalys, which run rail services between Britain and France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Mark Potter)