A train trip between small or medium sized towns at opposite ends of France by train normally works like this: TER regional train to the nearest city, TGV at high speed across the country, and then a TER for the last leg.
So let’s take a worked example – Haguenau (population 36000, 30km from Strasbourg) to Arcachon (population 11000, 55km from Bordeaux).
This is what SNCF Connect suggests for this trip, for the test date 18 February – 3 options, 2 bookable as 1 is full:
Try this on any of the rivals in French ticket sales – 1.2.Train, Omio, Kombo and Trainline – and you get more or less the same (and definitely not more options):
But by now anyone with some sort of knowledge of French geography and France’s rail network will be thinking “hang on, why not go via Paris?”
Turn to, errr, Deutsche Bahn (yes, using the German rail company’s planner!) and that’s what is suggested – loads of trains!
We have the options with 2 changes we also found at SNCF Connect et al in here, but a slew of options with 3 changes – all the ones with an arrow in the middle require a transfer between Paris terminals (Est to Montparnasse).
The problem: SNCF’s own searches cannot ever show you connections involving more than two changes. And – importantly – this limitation in SNCF’s system is just passed straight across to the resellers like Trainline and 1.2.Train.
So let’s break down a three change option manually.
If we take the 12:09 departure from Haguenau we get prices for each leg as follows:
Haguenau-Strasbourg – €9,30
Strasbourg-Paris Est – €29
Paris Montparnasse-Bordeaux St Jean – €51
Bordeaux St Jean-Arcachon – €13,80
(you also need to add €2,50 for the metro ticket across Paris from Est to Montparnasse – that you need to buy in a separate app or online)
Total: €105.60 – a little cheaper and much faster than the cheapest option offered by SNCF Connect, and a good bit cheaper than the best offers from any other platform.
What is happening here?
None of these sites that can sell a Haguenau – Arcachon ticket is correctly separating route planning from ticket sales. All of them query the SNCF API that returns a result that is “maximum 2 changes, that’s it, that is all we will show you”. Deutsche Bahn by contrast shows all reasonable routes, but then cannot sell tickets for those routes (which given it’s a German site is sort of understandable).
It would be theoretically possible for a site like Trainline or 1.2.Train to do this better – to realise the limits of the SNCF systems and somehow find a way around them (perhaps 2 transactions – Haguenau-Strasbourg-Paris-Bordeaux, and Bordeaux-Arcachon separately?) but either something in SNCF’s terms or SNCF’s API prevents this, or a lack of human or technological resources in these companies is the limit.
Anyway, whatever the reasons are, the conclusion here is clear: before you even come to ticket sales, you need a good route – so seeing route planning and sales somewhat separately is a good thing. Something to bear in mind for the forthcoming EU Ticketing Regulation.
In GB, there is at least the passenger benefit that any ticket sold with a journey plan by an approved retailer is valid for the planned journey, even if other rules say it isn’t and it looks like it was issued in error (for example, a connection time too short, using a train normally excluded for your ticket type, or an e-ticket for a route not yet accepting them). Is there any similar benefit in France? If a ticket is sold with a journey plan, will they always honour it as valid?
If you change trains at the places where your tickets start and end, yes. If you don’t, no.
So if your trains are Haguenau – Strasbourg – Paris, your tickets must be Haguenau – Paris, or Haguenau – Strasbourg and Strasbourg – Paris. Your ticket cannot be – for example – Haguenau – Bischwiller and Bischwiller – Paris, because even though the Haguenau – Strasbourg train stops in Bischwiller you do not change trains there. Clear?
Another example : SNCF’s API sells ticket with unnecessarily long transfers in Paris.
If I want to travel from Joigny to Lille next Monday, google maps trip planner indicates 3h06 :
– 08h12 Joigny > 09h35 Paris Bercy
– 40mn transfer in Paris
– 10h15 Paris Nord > 11h18 Lille Flandres
SNCF only sells 08h12 Joigny > 12h07 Lille Europe with a 1h17mn transfer in Paris and 3h55 journey time (49mn more than the first option).
For whatever reason, DB planner doesn’t show the first option either.
I am not sure about that – there is some minimum stipulated time to cross Paris, but I don’t know exactly how it is calculated. It is possible Google Maps is going below what is strictly allowed.
I checked it with sbb.ch (which uses the same data pool as DB) for today, and they dynamically showed an additional connection, using a TGV from Strasbourg to Paris which is 10 minutes late. I did not get farther to see whether they could sell tickets, however.
I am pretty sure DB would dynamically show such a connection too. And theoretically SNCF’s system could too, if you still needed only 2 changes.