Ten thousand train tickets will go on sale on Tuesday 23 May 2023 from 7am in a promotion at SNCF, France’s state rail operator.
The promotion on the company’s website will target two major rail routes in Hexagon, Paris-Lyon and Paris-Nantes, and will be valid for 24 hours only and only on trains in the Ouigo-Train Classique network, on the occasion of their one-year anniversary. Journeys will be available from 24 May to 5 July.
The routes on sale cover 14 stations on the two routes. On the Paris-Lyon route they are: Paris (Bercy station and Austerlitz station), Melun, Dijon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Mâcon and Lyon. On the other route there are the following stations: Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, Les Aubrais, Blois, Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, Saumur and Nantes.
Ouigo Trains Classiques: cheaper but slower
Tickets on Ouigo Trains Classiques trains are cheaper, but the trains run at the same speed as regional express trains (TER). Ouigo Trains Classiques trains, recognisable by their bright pink paint scheme, run on the Paris-Lyon and Paris-Nantes lines, with five return journeys each way. Cheaper but also slower than the Ouigo Grande Vitesse trains, these trains will prove to be an attractive ultra-low-cost alternative for those who don’t place a high value on journey time. That’s because with Ouigo Trains Classiques the Paris-Lyon journey takes five hours and the Paris-Nantes journey takes four hours, compared with just two hours for the same routes with high-speed trains (TGV). However, more than 1.3 million passengers chose Ouigo Classiques last year. A predictable success for this offer, since four out of ten French people say train tickets are too expensive, according to a recent survey by Harris Interactive.
As for Ouigo Trains Classiques tickets, they can normally be bought for between EUR10 and EUR30 for adults and EUR5 for children, according to SNCF Voyageurs, Ouigo’s parent company. In January this year, the rail company increased its fares by an average of 5% to cope with the explosion in operating costs. Now we have this SNCF promotion.
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