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This is surprising because train tickets have gone nothing but up, at least in France. You used to be able to do Paris-Marseille (660km, 410 US miles) in 3:30 h

by remram 4y ago

This is surprising because train tickets have gone nothing but up, at least in France. You used to be able to do Paris-Marseille (660km, 410 US miles) in 3:30 hours, for 30€. Recently it's operated by private companies, who limit you to one piece of luggage and make you check in in advance, and charge you 150€. Like they are trying to be an airplane company but slower and more expensive. I thought we had given up to be honest.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
I have trouble following your post. Paris-Marseille is still strictly operated by SNCF. Some of them might be under their low cost branding but that’s still SNCF and a one-way trip is 37€ provided you book it one month in advance. Local services will be partially operated by a private company from 2025 onwards but to be fair it will be hard to do worth than SNCF in the south. They are on strike so often they could stop working I’m not sure anyone would notice.
- otagekki 4y ago
  > Some of them might be under their low cost branding but that’s still SNCF and a one-way trip is 37€ provided you book it one month in advance. This is exactly their problem: over-the-counter tickets are prohibitively expensive, making them effectively operate like airlines if not worse, and taking all its drawbacks from the customer point of view but none of the advantages. Domestic railways has recently been open to competition, but prices still haven't gone down much enough to match with the low-cost carriers they're competing with.
- remram 4y ago
  I'm running into an error using https://www.sncf-connect.com/app/home/search https://www.sncf-connect.com/app/home/search, no matter what I enter in. The last 3 times I took the trip (pre-COVID mind you, and maybe not booked a whole month in advance), that was the price. edit: works in Chrome, here are the trips exactly 1 month from now (August 6): 65€ 6am, 65€ 7:13am, 116€ 7:39am, 116€ 9:36am, 116€ 10:39am. A month and a half or two months advance seem to be required now, how bad we think it is is up to debate but it's definitely worse than when I commuted regularly, 2009-2011.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Not going to deny it’s less easy that it used to be but SNCF desesperately needs to extract some values from their business customers. Apart from a couple of lines of which Paris-Marseille isn’t they are always losing money on trip. Also if you struggle with SNCF Connect which is terrible my advise is to use Trainline instead. It’s not as good as it used to be when the French part was still CaptainTrain but it’s miles better than the SNCF app.
    - remram 4y ago
      > use Trainline instead Yeah this was already the wisdom in the days of voyage-sncf.com. Some things never change.

by remram 4y ago

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

I have trouble following your post. Paris-Marseille is still strictly operated by SNCF. Some of them might be under their low cost branding but that’s still SNCF and a one-way trip is 37€ provided you book it one month in advance. Local services will be partially operated by a private company from 2025 onwards but to be fair it will be hard to do worth than SNCF in the south. They are on strike so often they could stop working I’m not sure anyone would notice.

otagekki 4y ago
> Some of them might be under their low cost branding but that’s still SNCF and a one-way trip is 37€ provided you book it one month in advance. This is exactly their problem: over-the-counter tickets are prohibitively expensive, making them effectively operate like airlines if not worse, and taking all its drawbacks from the customer point of view but none of the advantages. Domestic railways has recently been open to competition, but prices still haven't gone down much enough to match with the low-cost carriers they're competing with.
remram 4y ago
I'm running into an error using https://www.sncf-connect.com/app/home/search https://www.sncf-connect.com/app/home/search, no matter what I enter in. The last 3 times I took the trip (pre-COVID mind you, and maybe not booked a whole month in advance), that was the price. edit: works in Chrome, here are the trips exactly 1 month from now (August 6): 65€ 6am, 65€ 7:13am, 116€ 7:39am, 116€ 9:36am, 116€ 10:39am. A month and a half or two months advance seem to be required now, how bad we think it is is up to debate but it's definitely worse than when I commuted regularly, 2009-2011.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Not going to deny it’s less easy that it used to be but SNCF desesperately needs to extract some values from their business customers. Apart from a couple of lines of which Paris-Marseille isn’t they are always losing money on trip. Also if you struggle with SNCF Connect which is terrible my advise is to use Trainline instead. It’s not as good as it used to be when the French part was still CaptainTrain but it’s miles better than the SNCF app.
  - remram 4y ago
    > use Trainline instead Yeah this was already the wisdom in the days of voyage-sncf.com. Some things never change.