The joy of separate railway enterprises (complex fares in France)

[MarcVD]

So last Sunday I find myself, with wife and another friend in tow, in the lovely little station of Orry la Ville, in the northern outskirts of Paris.

The station is outside the limits of the Île de France region, and is served by Paris RER line D - organised by Île de France mobilités - and by TER Picardie trains. Both are operated by SNCF. We want to go to Saint Denis, to visit the cathedral where all French kings used to be buried. All TER Picardie trains seem to run straight from Orry La Ville to Paris Nord, and thus do not stop in Saint Denis. RER D seems to be the only option. Problem, apparently because we are not in Île de France anymore, there is no Île de France mobilités ticket machine in the station, only a TER Picardie one. And being on a Sunday, the ticket window is of course closed.

So to prove our goodwill, we purchase a TER ticket to Paris and board the next RER D train. Good service, every half hour. But alighting at Saint Denis, problems begin. We don't have the right tickets, so gates won't let us out. We had to beg for help from the locals - who were more than happy to oblige - to exit the station.

And next to return. The ticket window in the old station building could not emit the proper ticket - guy in the window did not even know where Orry la ville was - and after 15 minutes spent on the phone directed us to another ticket office, in another building, on the other side of the tracks. Where we finally obtained the tickets we needed.

What the heck is that for a farce ? And how were we supposed to by the correct ticket at the Orry la ville station ?

 

[MrC]

TBH these days it's much easier to use the IDF Mobilities or RATP apps on a phone to get around the Metro RER lines (if you've got a phone each).

 

[rvdborgt]

AFAIK the problem here is not separate operators but 2 regions (IdF and Picardie) that run trains in parallel without proper solutions for journeys that cross the regional border and without any co-operation for the fares of the parallel trains.

 

[The exile]

AFAIK the problem here is not separate operators but 2 regions (IdF and Picardie) that run trains in parallel without proper solutions for journeys that cross the regional border and without any co-operation for the fares of the parallel trains.

And hey presto - if anyone was looking for it, proof that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Aug 2026 ==

TBH these days it's much easier to use the IDF Mobilities or RATP apps on a phone to get around the Metro RER lines (if you've got a phone each).

About time that legislation were passed that any organisation providing something that is (effectively) only available on an app must also provide a suitable device on which to use the app free of charge. It’s fine to have app-based solutions as an alternative, but not as the only practical solution.

 

[rvdborgt]

About time that legislation were passed that any organisation providing something that is (effectively) only available on an app must also provide a suitable device on which to use the app free of charge. It’s fine to have app-based solutions as an alternative, but not as the only practical solution.

The problem here is that there are still only paper tickets for journeys that cross the IdF borders.

 

[Djgr]

And hey presto - if anyone was looking for it, proof that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence

although the UK were very keen to sell the idea of the balkanisation of the railways to the world.

 

[The exile]

although the UK were very keen to sell the idea of the balkanisation of the railways to the world.

But with some pretty important caveats which the rest of the world didn’t necessarily adopt.

 

[Stossgebet]

although the UK were very keen to sell the idea of the balkanisation of the railways to the world.

You mean that the eec, then the eu, saw what Sweden had done to balkanise their railway, and decided without any democratic consent, to impose it on all eu member states!

Look up eec440/1991 and
Eu 1370/2007 before spitting negativity towards the UK!

 

[Bletchleyite]

You mean that the eec, then the eu, saw what Sweden had done to balkanise their railway, and decided without any democratic consent, to impose it on all eu member states!

Look up eec440/1991 and
Eu 1370/2007 before spitting negativity towards the UK!

The Fourth Railway Package (possibly the worst piece of EU legislation ever) basically took the UK approach and applied it EU wide, after a fashion. It left some important protections out, though, such as multiple tickets being allowed to constitute one journey with appropriate protections. Plus for staff in Germany at least their TUPE equivalent appears not to apply, so T&Cs etc can be messed with each time a new contract is let.

It's a right mess.

 

[rvdborgt]

It left some important protections out, though, such as multiple tickets being allowed to constitute one journey with appropriate protections.

The member states largely didn't want that, contrary to the European Parliament. The EC is having a new go at that; we'll see what the result will be.
But as I already wrote, the issue is not multiple operators but rather the responsible regional transport authorities (who set the fares) not co-operating and making life difficult for passengers. In the German-speaking world, such examples are generally solved one way or another. In France, they seem to have to reinvent the wheel.

 

[johncrossley]

And hey presto - if anyone was looking for it, proof that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

The problem is when a single example of poor practice abroad is used as an excuse to continue poor practice in the UK. There are of course better examples of integrated fares and ticketing in Europe. The fact that the Paris region is poor is irrelevant, because obviously it would be silly to copy it.

 

[NCT]

It's not even a question of different enterprises. It's government bodies and a government owned company not cooperating.

I don't think anyone wants to argue for removing devolution in France (would you abolish TfL?). GB has it right with interavailable / through tickets governed by the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement.

GB has a successful rule based railway regardless of the who. Government owned monopolies like SNCF want to control a who based railway.

The Fourth Railway Package is entirely the right approach.

 

[Stossgebet]

It's not even a question of different enterprises. It's government bodies and a government owned company not cooperating.

I don't think anyone wants to argue for removing devolution in France (would you abolish TfL?). GB has it right with interavailable / through tickets governed by the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement.

GB has a successful rule based railway regardless of the who. Government owned monopolies like SNCF want to control a who based railway.

The Fourth Railway Package is entirely the right approach.

Is your opinion that the FRP is right, a resounding democratic mandate for it?
Personally, i find it a perfect example of how the eu erodes and destroys democracy. See the legal fight the Dutch are having in the ECJ for delaying compliance with the FRP!

 

[NCT]

Is your opinion that the FRP is right, a resounding democratic mandate for it?
Personally, i find it a perfect example of how the eu erodes and destroys democracy. See the legal fight the Dutch are having in the ECJ for delaying compliance with the FRP!

It got the necessary approvals via the Parliament and the Council of Europe, the usual democratic processes in the EU.

In any case, I'm arguing the technical merits, not the politics, of the FRP. Given that we are outside the EU, we don't have a horse in the political race, so I suggest we stick to the technicals.

 

[Stossgebet]

It got the necessary approvals via the Parliament and the Council of Europe, the usual democratic processes in the EU.

In any case, I'm arguing the technical merits, not the politics, of the FRP. Given that we are outside the EU, we don't have a horse in the political race, so I suggest we stick to the technicals.

The technicals mandate fragmentation. In principle, that is costly and damaging on a systemic level..
Yes, there might be some small wins. Like an open access operator. But even when an open access operator is well regarded for its local users (perhaps like Hull Trains), it is in principle, costlier than the gains because of what the system as a whole loses.
See how East mids losing its 222's has become a nightmare. The railway operators have little to no lee-way to manage the fleets because they can be contracted elsewhere. If you keep the whole fleet, while the new one is bedded in properly, you pay a fortune in leasing fees, meaning the tax payer and fare payer is ripped off by the system.
Track access charges, as invented and mandated in 440/1991, mean that adding a carriage to a busy train now often needs a buisness case, rather than just a logical public service fulfillment.

The principle of the eu fourth railway package, to destroy verticle integration and make all the public train operations a competition to profit from public subsidy, means again, that both taxpayers and fare payers lose (unless you heavily subsidise something like the D-Ticket, which costs billions of euros in subsidy each year, basically buying the passengers objections out of the way, before they understand what's happened to the system)

The efficiency of train fleets and train crew have been destroyed. We saw this a lot in Germany, where a private company won a train operation, and didn't recruit enough crew in time for the start date.. we saw it in the UK where a franchise was split, and train crew on one side of the split lose route knowledge, the other side of the split needs to recruit more crew, and the train fleet gets split, losing efficency and spare capacity.

This is what happens when politicians make rules about an industry, without any regard for its operation. And do so, for ideological reasons. And i don't believe for one moment that there was any meaningful democracy involved in it. Eu 1370/2007 that mandated tendering of trains to private companies came after 8 years of Labour government. Indeed, the first eu railway package was under the tenure of Labour Neil Kinnock as the eu transport commissioner.

Are we to believe that Labour is guilty of pushing all of this with a legitimate mandate from its electorate? Maybe if you can think it would result in more jobs (duplicated roles), more union members? Possibily. But then, the unions have been wholly against the fragmentation. So where is the mandate?

It that's a bit about my objections.

Why do you think it is a good thing?

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

French régions have been responsable for organising local trains since 2002, the Fourth Railway Package was adopted in 2016. I think we are getting off-track here...

It's just general government incompetence that Ile-de-France and the régions around it haven't managed to find easy solutions for this since IdFM reformed its ticketing system. There was some media coverage about this a couple months ago (

), and there will soon be new ticket variants which hopefully will be easier to purchase. For the trip in question in here (Orry-la-Ville - Saint-Denis), OP would need a "ticket Métro-Train-RER D/H/K/P1" then

 

[The exile]

Plus for staff in Germany at least their TUPE equivalent appears not to apply, so T&Cs etc can be messed with each time a new contract is let.

Nor, until the Laender started setting their own rolling stock pools (as a reaction?), did it apply to rolling stock, so you could have a new operator starting but with no stock available (or at a mundane level, no one having thought how to get the new rolling stock to the far end of the line to form the first trains on launch day.)

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

Plus for staff in Germany at least their TUPE equivalent appears not to apply, so T&Cs etc can be messed with each time a new contract is let.

Since 2016, §131 Abs. 3 GWB means that when the operator changes, the German equivalent of TUPE (§613a BGB) applies

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nor, until the Laender started setting their own rolling stock pools (as a reaction?), did it apply to rolling stock, so you could have a new operator starting but with no stock available (or at a mundane level, no one having thought how to get the new rolling stock to the far end of the line to form the first trains on launch day.)

And thus we get to the issue of the contractor just being a glorified employment agency. What's the point in that?

See also London Overground and the Liz.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Aug 2026 ==

Since 2016, §131 Abs. 3 GWB means that when the operator changes, the German equivalent of TUPE (§613a BGB) applies

Thanks, that's an improvement at least.

 

[Stossgebet]

French régions have been responsable for organising local trains since 2002, the Fourth Railway Package was adopted in 2016. I think we are getting off-track here...

It's just general government incompetence that Ile-de-France and the régions around it haven't managed to find easy solutions for this since IdFM reformed its ticketing system. There was some media coverage about this a couple months ago (

), and there will soon be new ticket variants which hopefully will be easier to purchase. For the trip in question in here (Orry-la-Ville - Saint-Denis), OP would need a "ticket Métro-Train-RER D/H/K/P1" then

Because the writing was on the wall for years

French régions have been responsable for organising local trains since 2002, the Fourth Railway Package was adopted in 2016. I think we are getting off-track here...

It's just general government incompetence that Ile-de-France and the régions around it haven't managed to find easy solutions for this since IdFM reformed its ticketing system. There was some media coverage about this a couple months ago (

), and there will soon be new ticket variants which hopefully will be easier to purchase. For the trip in question in here (Orry-la-Ville - Saint-Denis), OP would need a "ticket Métro-Train-RER D/H/K/P1" then

The mandate to tender train operations was in eu 1370/2007.
So the writing was on the wall before then...

This isn't off-track. This is the very reason for all the fragmentation, which causes so many of the anomolies one way or another, that the OP has raised.

 

[NCT]

And thus we get to the issue of the contractor just being a glorified employment agency. What's the point in that?

See also London Overground and the Liz.

Avoids the temptation of having all staff being rolled into LU contracts and Ts & Cs.

The Overground and Liz have been a godsend on Tube strike days.

 

[signed]

The issue is regions having complete control on the fares, and, as typical here, not bothering to cooperate on top of little use.

As mentioned, it will change from November

The Fourth Railway Package is entirely the right approach.

Again absolutely not, it is eroding everything

The next decade is going to be dark for transit as a whole in the EU. There is no reason ever to force authorities to choose private companies to operate a public service, it should be a case-by-case basis choice by the relevant authority.

Especially that now we basically have de-facto public enterprises operating as private companies competing with each other, which blurs the line even more when the money comes from de-facto the same pot and that the FRP is used as a scapegoat to shaft the traveller.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The next decade is going to be dark for transit as a whole in the EU. There is no reason ever to force authorities to choose private companies to operate a public service, it should be a case-by-case basis choice by the relevant authority.

100% agree. Either operate directly or tender to any EU company should be the choice. Banning direct operation or making it tender on the same basis is as stupid as the same thing is in UK bus operation.

Forcing privatisation is gross overreach on the part of the EU.

 

[rvdborgt]

Either operate directly or tender to any EU company should be the choice.

AFAIK that is the case already.

 

[signed]

AFAIK that is the case already.

An authority can directly operate only for small networks AFAICR

Not that it changes anything because most authorities don't have the funds to operate a full rail network. Ditto for bus networks, in France, there are basically one major in-house operation in Marseille and even then it's subcontracted elsewhere for the small lines.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It should probably also be possible to go for direct award to the national railway operator if there is one.

 

[signed]

It should probably also be possible to go for direct award to the national railway operator if there is one.

That's my main issue here, is that under the guises of FRP, in France they decided to privatize SNCF, so there is no national railway operator anymore

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It's not even a question of different enterprises. It's government bodies and a government owned company not cooperating.
I don't think anyone wants to argue for removing devolution in France (would you abolish TfL?). GB has it right with interavailable / through tickets governed by the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement.
GB has a successful rule based railway regardless of the who. Government owned monopolies like SNCF want to control a who based railway.
The Fourth Railway Package is entirely the right approach.

There's potential for the GBR setup to worsen our level of interavailability, much as Merseyrail manages to do today.
Devolution can work against integration.
Even the Deutschlandticket discriminates between local and IC services, even if they are all government-run.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's my main issue here, is that under the guises of FRP, in France they decided to privatize SNCF, so there is no national railway operator anymore

I think this brings up one of the differences in terminology between the UK and elsewhere. In the UK SNCF, DB etc are still considered nationalised - they are wholly owned by the state and so not operated for private profit. That sort of structure, otherwise known as a QuANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) is a very common one for publicly owned services in the UK rather than them being a direct part of the civil service as SNCF and DB once were.

GBR is also structured in that way, with the nationalised TOCs being part of DfT Operator Ltd, a company wholly owned by the state. Similarly Network Rail is a limited company, but is definitely considered nationalised, with any debts it has considered part of the national debt. And the few remaining municipal bus companies (e.g. Blackpool and Edinburgh) are similarly companies owned by the Council rather than a direct part of it.

 

[signed]

I think this brings up one of the differences in terminology between the UK and elsewhere. In the UK SNCF, DB etc are still considered nationalised - they are wholly owned by the state and so not operated for private profit. That sort of structure, otherwise known as a QuANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) is a very common one for publicly owned services in the UK rather than them being a direct part of the civil service as SNCF and DB once were.

Sure, it's the case but it is convenient that they use the status to brag that TGV is OA with full on ad campaigns that basically say, due to the the fact it's unsubsidized, they need to actively rip off travellers while running the least amount of trains possible