I live in Paris. For tourists or travelers the alternative are not really ready. Ticket on smartphone support is bad (only specific models, and no iPhones) and unlike London or Brussel, you cannot use your credit card as a ticket.
So your only hope is to already have a dedicated rechargeable card. But this card is not sold in the automated machine. So if you are a tourist in some small station and you realize at midnight that you need to take the subway, there will be no way to buying a ticket…
Im all for ending those tickets, but the RATP is really bad at supporting alternatives.
Can't be worse than my visit to Rome last month. All the locals had their monthly passes, but all of the tourists bought paper tickets. Only problem was the bus to the Vatican had an issue with its ticket scanner - it didn't exist. Of course that bus got stopped and each of the tourists got a 55 euro fine. When I pointed out that the scanner was missing, the inspector didn't speak English, but when it came time to pay the fine, her English was flawless.
Next time, if that happens again, you need to be more assertive, by going with a: "Ma vai fanculo, vai!" (difficult to translate), followed by a more mellow "io non pago niente!" (I won't pay anything), and physically try to make a way out of the whole situation.
Granted, I'm not an Italian and I don't live in Italy, but I do live in a city very similar to Rome in many other aspects, and I've seen myself around these parts how foreign tourists are sometimes "hunted" for fines the same as it happened to you. In many cases those applying the abusive fines go for the "easy prey", as soon as you show some hints of fighting back they let you go, so to speak, not worth the hassle for them (especially as they also know that they're doing something very shitty and abusive).
Paris has about the worst card system I have ever seen. In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.
In Paris you have the following (at least you did a year ago):
- Paper tickets
- Prepaid, non-nominative cards that can be used for single trips and day-long unlimited travel plans, but no more than that
- Prepaid, nominative cards that support day-long and week-long travel plans, but not single trips
- Nominative cards that can do all of the above and more, but only for locals
- There is also the app, that has other limitations
And there is also some weirdness with connections. Metro to train may or may not be possible on a single ticket. Metro to RER usually is, but Metro to tram is not, unless maybe if you have the right card.
Why can't they do a single card that does everything, like in all other countries? Or maybe two, a non-nominative and a nominative one.
>In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.
Yep, this is how it is in Japan (but without the account bit). You buy a Suica or Passmo card at the airport when you arrive for 500 yen, "charge" it with a bunch of cash (which you helpfully get at the 7-bank ATM down the hall), then you can use that *everywhere in the whole country* for public transit, and many other things too if you want, like vending machines and many restaurants. (It's generally better to use a credit card for places that take it, but still, the option exists.) There's no advantage for locals either; everyone gets the same card, and it's not linked to any account.
Finally, when you're ready to leave the country, you can visit the customer service counter and surrender the card, and they will give you (in cash) the remaining balance on the card, plus the 500 yen deposit.
Also, unlike in Paris, you don't have to worry about any rude service people in Japan. Everyone is always polite here.
The Dutch made some similar mistakes. A certain number of discounts (amongst them any sort of child-rate fares!) are only available with a personal OV chipkaart, but
a) for a long time a personal card was only obtainable with a Dutch bank account and/or address of residence
b) the only improvement these days is that residents of the countries with a direct border with the Netherlands (i.e. Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) can get one, too, but it still needs to be ordered in advance. And anybody else is still left out, even though e.g. a resident of Lille (in France) is actually living closer to the Dutch border than a German from Munich.
Another thing is that with the switch from paper tickets to the OV chipkaart they sort of got rid of cross-operator through tickets, which means that
a) e.g. when travelling on the national railway network, you now need to pay attention whether you're also changing train operators when happening to change trains – in that case you must check out and back in again
b) checking out and back in resets reset the distance-based fare price degression, so it's more expensive. I think they continued tweaking some things here, so it's no longer quite as egregious as when originally introduced, but it's still somewhat of a step back compared to real through tickets.
And for anonymous chipkaarts there's a relatively high minimum top-up (technically 20 €, effectively 16 € as you're allowed 4 € of overdraft) required in order to be allowed to travel on the railways at all, which is unattractive for occasional travellers and shortish trips that might otherwise only cost a few euro (in which case a single use ticket might be a better option, as it "only" carries an 1 € surcharge).
I recently travelled to Paris a few times as a tourist. I normally travelled by train and metro. But on the last trip, a bus was much faster according to google maps.
Researched and knew the bus that would take me to my hotel. Checked google and the physical sign at the bustop at Gare de L'est. It confirmed you can buy a ticket on the bus. Tried to board a bus and got yelled at by another customer and the driver for not knowing I have to buy a ticket ahead of time at a machine or use "SMS ticket" which I wasn't eager to use and probably wouldn't even have worked on my foreign phone plan.
OK, I happen to know from previous bad experience I can't buy a ticket anywhere nearby the bus stop but have to go to the basement in the station to buy a ticket which is located at the entrance to the metro. The lineup is 20 people deep and the machine is SLOW to use. Definitely takes 2-3 minutes per person. After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris, confirm your address, and even then it takes 2-3 weeks to get one. There is a card you can get as a tourist, but it's only useful for expensive day passes, not for taking 1-2 euro trips. Is there another solution for paying for transit? Maybe, but good luck finding out what it is, I certainly could not in 10 minutes of googling or asking my French friends.
The solution was a 30 euro taxi ride.
Paris the the number 1 tourist destination on the planet, a travel hub city, has a great public transportation system, and from my experience is a great place for travel and probably to live. It's sad that they discontinued a simple metro ticket and require a special card to travel that is not readily available to tourists (or if it is, I certainly couldn't figure out a way to board a bus or predict how to board the metro next year). From personal experience, throughout the entire world, I have never experienced not being able to board public transit by using cash or credit card either on board or from a nearby, working ticket machine. I have experienced simply using cash, using my tap to pay card, or missing one train/bus due to figuring out how to find a local ticket card or transit card. Only in Paris have I literally given up and taken a taxi.
> After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris
That hasn’t been true for years. Anyone can get a pay-as-you-go card which you can top up from your phone or a machine inside every station. The only issue is that you have to buy them either from a counter in a station or from one of the numerous approved shops.
You can also pay the bus from inside. I don’t know what you are talking about. From the tone of your post, you probably didn’t bother saying hello and just started talking in English so the driver told you to get lost.
Paris is fine for tourists. People just expect to be treated with politeness and decency which is not how Americans generally behave with staff.
Just say hi, please, thank you, ask people if they speak English or show a minimum of contrition when talking directly in English to show you realise it would be nicer to speak the language of the land, everything will be fine.
It’s puzzling to me why people expect things to go well visiting France without studying what’s considered polit and what’s not. It’s the capital of a country. It’s not Disneyland.
My wife and I were plenty polite, like I said many of our interactions with everyday people were fine. It was some of the workers in restaurants and hotels that were rude. There was also the pickpocket at the train station impersonating a station worker (thankfully we ignored them and the attendant in the booth told them to go away).
It’s OK though. It’s your city. We’re happy to visit elsewhere and I’m sure you’re happy we’re not there, silly Americans that we are.
While I'm sure you knew to say please and thank you, and at least try to use their language, you also can't really deny some of your countrymen have given you a poor reputation. It's come to the point that your reputation is so bad, the common advice is to impersonate Canadians.
Were the Parisiens wrong to be rude? Probably. Could they have simply learned from other Americans that being rude is the default? I would assume so. I'm not saying it's your fault, just that it can be easier to assume the next Americans will be as loud and obnoxious as the last ones.
Seriously service is very much fine in Paris. Most people are very nice. It’s always Americans complaining about it. I witness it everyday. Most American tourist expects service to be nice for no reason, is unpleasant, goes to the wrong person and then is surprised people are rude.
Stop acting like you are owed something. It’s all going to get better.
Even provincial French people I know complain about Parisiens being rude and unhelpful. Personally I’ve never had an issue as an English person who learned metropolitan French at school. Montreal though… wow.
The popular and/or well situated places tend to not give a shit, because what will you do? You're just one of a thousand customers waiting to get there, so screw you.
More standard places however, tend to be like any other places I witnessed in Europe, i.e. filled with run-of-the-mill merchants happy to get business.
Which explain the difference of experience between Parisians and tourists: the latter are (rightfully) shocked by prices and service in the shitty tourist trap on rue de Rivoli or Montmartre, which absolutely does not reflect the experience of the former in the little Georgian restaurant or their favorite bistro three streets down their flat.
Travelling to Paris for ~ 15 years as I have some family there, I never, ever used a bus: either RER, regular subway or walking (I walked 10+ km several times). I found the experience of bus tickets for tourists a hit or miss across Europe, either big cities not friendly with tourists (some: especially inaccessible with people not speaking the local language, mostly in Germany) or positively surprised when things were a lot simpler than I thought in unexpected places. For public transportation, this lack of consistency is bad.
>After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris, confirm your address, and even then it takes 2-3 weeks to get one. There is a card you can get as a tourist, but it's only useful for expensive day passes, not for taking 1-2 euro trips.
They failed you, because such a card exists and is called the Navigo Easy, costs €2, and you can load individual trips on it. Unfortunately the machines don't sell the cards yet, so you have to talk to a human.
> Do you want to take trips on the metro, bus or tram? Do you want a rechargeable pass? The Navigo Easy pass is made for you!
> Ideal for : Les touristes et les clients voyageant occasionnellement
There's also a table further down the page that's only available in French that explains which fare combinations are allowed (ie. cannot load both a full fare and reduced fare on the same card). Although even if one reads French, it's not clear what the orange cell means, so maybe the RATP just hates all of its customers. :-)
I think that's the gist - the table is confusing and complex even for a French speaker.
"Tourist" cards should always be "you can ride basically everything" and "more expensive than if you know what you're doing". I have no idea what a "day pass" on the Metro is, but tourists will gladly pay more for something they don't have to think about and works everywhere.
I purchased these for my family on my last trip, and it took a little work; I had to go to the office in the train station, then ask, there was confusion with the Navigo vs the Navigo Easy. In the end, it worked, and the $2 cost of the card was covered by the discount on the 10-ride pack.
That said, the just-use-your-credit card system in London is way better.
The same is going on here in Barcelona. They have the new electronic ticket but you need to pay for it, then get it sent to your home and it's not anonymous like most of the paper ones were.
You can get one on your phone too but it still doesn't solve the anonymity problem. Even if you get it on the phone you need to submit photo ID first :( Still a royal pain for tourists too.
They also (next year) want to stop the super easy 1,10 euro per trip (any trip any mode) tariff. Which also makes everything easy because there's no need to do an exit scan. Besides the hassle that the paper tickets were (they become unreadable if you look at them wrong) I don't really see any positives to this new system.
Besides that it has taken many more years and millions to introduce than planned. And it's already been hacked before it went live because someone didn't change the admin/admin passwords on the website... Gotta love government operations.
> Even if you get it on the phone you need to submit photo ID first
Why do they need ID for city travel tickets? That's just crazy. Really crazy. Where will all this madness end? Why isn't anyone saying: "Hey, asking for ID data in order to travel by bus is pure China-like craziness!"?
That's a shame. I just paid for a T-casual with cash and it worked beautifully throughout the week despite becoming a crumpled mess by the end of my trip.
NYC is moving to a system called OMNY, where you can either hunt down a retailer with the cards or just use tap-to-pay. I suspect many casual riders will use the latter because of the low friction, but it's indeed not anonymous.
NYC tap to pay is a beautiful system. Seamless with any mobile phone, and if you have an apple watch the integration is insane -- just put the watch near the reader and it knows it's a transit reader and just works, no need to even initiate payment.
> Besides the hassle that the paper tickets were (they become unreadable if you look at them wrong)
Or the paper ticket is even slightly bent. Or bent in half. Or mildly wet. Or a corner is folded. Or sometimes it looks fine but just won't work. Or it works at one station but not another.
I say all that because each situation happened to me on my visit to Barcelona this summer :)
I also had a problem where I had to basically rebuy a new 10-trip ticket twice within a day of each other, because the first got folded in a bag, and the other I thought I misplaced (only to find it at the absolute bottom of a heavily packed shopping bag). Oh and the one day I tried to get my folded ticket replaced, the only station I passed through was closed early! How convenient :)
Basically, those paper tickets WERE a pain. But I don't like the new photo ID cards they're introducing either. Good luck I suppose...
It took ages to reach an agreement with Apple which was offering extortionate rates for allowing their customers to use the NFC chip in their phones in a classic Apple move.
Me too, but I don't have a local bank account. You can't sign up for a Navigo Liberté (pay as you go card) without a local IBAN (which is illegal, there is an EU law that anyone accepting bank transfers needs to treat accounts from all EU member states equally). So I buy paper tickets. This is really dumb. Paper tickets work, just leave it alone.
Paris’s paper tickets work until you keep it in your pocket next to your phone and the strip demagnetizes. Happened to me twice before I figured out what was happening.
Welcome to public transport just about everywhere. It's fine if you're a local or a frequent enough traveler to one of the cities where you have an app and/or a contactless card.
A first-time visitor who is jet-lagged and may not speak the language? Sorry you're not our priority--even at the airport.
London gets this (mostly) right, because there "contactless card" includes Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Maestro credit and debit cards, and smartphones with equivalent contactless payment. The local transport card (Oyster) is only needed for other fares (e.g. child-rate tickets) or season tickets of a month or longer.
Travel from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports is included in this.
(The only thing they could improve is the signage at Heathrow. They promote the expensive Heathrow Express train, when many people would be better taking an Elizabeth Line train on the same rails — 15 minutes slower and ¼ the price.)
(One more thing, last month they seem to have introduced a £5-£7 cost to get an Oyster card, which seems needlessly extortionate for visitors that do need them. Years ago it was a small deposit, which you could get returned in cash at the machine.)
I noticed last time I was in London there seemed to be more choices; I already have an Oyster Card anyway.
Systems do seem to be getting more standardized in general although the user experience for a first time visitor to a city--especially if they haven't checked things out ahead of time--isn't necessarily great because they can't really depend on just tapping a credit card on a reader.
is stansted included? I always buy ticket through traveline and I dont think you can get through the train gates with card payment..
> Passengers are not able to use Oyster cards or contactless payment cards on the Stansted Express services to Stansted Airport. It is advised that passengers book tickets in advance or, alternatively purchase tickets at the train station. By booking in advance you are able to save money on their journeys.
You are correct. I read "The addition of Luton Airport Parkway to stations accepting pay as you go means that four of London’s airports are now accessible by simply using contactless." [1]. The other is London City Airport, not Stansted.
The machines are being equipped with card dispensers; you can see them in modern machines when they are open for maintenance or money collection. They're just not ready yet.
I'm testing the beta version of their Android ticket software and it works pretty well (and not limited to Samsung phones). It should be available soon I think.
Please just use the same system london does. I dont need another useless app just to buy a ticket...
I dont want to think about tickets. I am happy to pay the price but just let me not think about it. Like I was travelling to La Defense, and my ticket did not work.. How I am supposed to know that this isnt part of the same system when the tube goes there.. just charge me whats appropriate and let me be..
The system in London works well enough when you are staying in the city. But the gates are difficult to use if you are traveling with luggage. And I don't really like having to validate the ticket twice on each trip. I prefer a honor system where you can simply board the train without any additional hassle.
An honor system is great if you want to run a free transit system. Every honor system train I've encountered soon devolves into a case of 90% or more of passengers simply not paying. That's fine if that's the goal but it's no way to run a system where fares are expected to fund it in any meaningful way.
I find that a useful test. If an honor system doesn't work, it's probably not a society I want to live in.
In Helsinki, local trains, trams, and the metro have used an honor system as long as I can remember. According to the estimates I've seen, only 3-5% of people don't pay.
When I lived in Munich, my dad visited and on one of our U-Bahn trips he mentioned how easy it is to travel without paying as there are no barriers anywhere.
I replied that it is also ridiculously easy to actually pay for your trip, and the prices are fair was well. Yay for the honor system!
It was a delight using public transport there, and every metro or tram stop had a working ticketing machine with multiple options, accepting both cash and cards. In contrast to many other places.
Getting rid of the paper cards in Paris seems premature, if I read about the current alternatives, or lack thereof.
in prague a lot of tourists don't pay. I think sometimes its because they dont care and sometimes because it is inconvinient / they dont know how etc. Also the paper tickets have an expiry so it is easy to forgot about that. Making paying as convinient as possible is imho the best way to increase revenue from public transportation...
we have that system in prague, it requires employing bunch of weirdos who go around randomly and check peoples tickets. They usually catch somebody. Often times tourists.
I have to admit that I have also used to ride without ticket when I was younger.
I loved visiting paris this summer but was surprised by how archaic and slow the machines were too buy tickets. I also found it amusing how there are at least three different interfaces/machine styles throughout the system. I made the mistake of buying a one way ticket to Versailles. I missed the train back home although I was twenty minutes early because the line to buy a ticket took forever. At least two minutes per customer
>there are at least three different interfaces/machine styles
Yes!! This drove me nuts.
Not only are there different UIs, but the physical UX differed sometimes too! I really, really want to know who's idea it was to implement the rollbar they have on the machines, because that absolutely does not work well. And the fact it rolled on one machine up and down, and on the next it's reversed??
I hate buying mobile tickets but sometimes it's just so much more convenient.
Absolutely! I had a great time in Paris and felt fortunate I was able to go visit. I was just commenting about the metro system which could use some UX attention and consistency on an article about the Paris Metro. I hope my comment doesn’t dissuade anyone from going!
That's a long time. Some things have been around longer: brothel tokens date from the 1st century to the early 1900's. Roman brothel tokens were used in London, and Upton Sinclair wrote about 'brass check' tokens used in his youth (1919).
I visited a few European countries this past summer and Paris was definitely not the best in terms of public transport tickets. I had to buy the paper 3 day visitor pass from Orly after finding no way as an iPhone user to purchase a ticket on the Île-de-France Mobilités app or their website. Constant fear of losing my $50 euro investment that's a mere 6.5cm x 3cm rectangle.
Some cities had the tap to pay gates which were by far the most convenient option as an Apple Pay user. Others like Berlin or Wien had working mobile tickets.
First day in my visit to Paris this summer, I passed by a Navigo machine that seemed to be stuck in a locked boot state. I guess the internal IDE drive died if it was stuck searching.
Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG, An Energy Star Ally
Copyright (C) 1984-2003, Phoenix Technologies, LTD
**** SOM-4487 BIOS A3.02C (2009/06/02> ****
Main Processor : Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.00GHz(100x10.0)
Memory Testing: 491520K OK +32768K Shared Memory
Memory Frequency For DDR266
Detecting IDE drives ...
Press DEL to enter SETUP
11/06/2008-i855-W83627HF-6A69YAKEC-00
Just interesting what's powering systems like these!
Lol. The last time I was in Paris, I must have lost 20-30€ of metro tickets. I kept the tickets in the same pocket as my smart phone, and when I took it out of my pocket the tickets would fall out with it. Having lived there on and off over the years I still have the yellow and later purple tickets, some of them unused. Anyway, ideally it would be nice to have an NFC style solution where you would be charged on exit (for the metro/RER at least) so that you would not have to figure out the proper fare ahead of time. Bus would be a flat rate. And while we are at it, make the fare system simpler (though some old-timers may remember when you needed multiple tickets for long, multi-zone bus rides -- at least those days are gone).
I’m a bit confused. In NYC we recently completed the swap to Omny which supports any contactless payment - physical card, apple pay, google pay, etc. This is available in all trains and buses. The only exception is when transferring to the airport’s air train which still required a metro card though this will be remedied in the near future.
When I was in London this year I could do the same - tap in and tap out (with anything that supported tap to pay) since the cost depends on the distance.
Is there not a similar system available in France to replace the physical tickets?
Is the only option a special card you have to purchase ahead of time and then separately load money into?
Surprising this is poorly planned from the same country that was so quick to adopt the chip in credit cards.
Paper tickets were the only affordable alternative when we visited Paris for a week during the summer. There was a "pay-go" card that cost a bunch upfront and you could charge it with 10 or so trips at a time (and you couldn't share it either, so each family member needed a separate one).
I've used Bolt (a cheaper Uber alternative) a bunch, though taxis in general don't seem very family friendly (several cars refused to pick us up - a family of 4 - because they apparently only take 2-3 passengers in the back seats).
I've always been curious about that as a kid: how's the magnetic strip encoded, on the ticket? Couldn't find any articles on that after a quick search.
I live in Paris. For tourists or travelers the alternative are not really ready. Ticket on smartphone support is bad (only specific models, and no iPhones) and unlike London or Brussel, you cannot use your credit card as a ticket.
So your only hope is to already have a dedicated rechargeable card. But this card is not sold in the automated machine. So if you are a tourist in some small station and you realize at midnight that you need to take the subway, there will be no way to buying a ticket…
Im all for ending those tickets, but the RATP is really bad at supporting alternatives.
Can't be worse than my visit to Rome last month. All the locals had their monthly passes, but all of the tourists bought paper tickets. Only problem was the bus to the Vatican had an issue with its ticket scanner - it didn't exist. Of course that bus got stopped and each of the tourists got a 55 euro fine. When I pointed out that the scanner was missing, the inspector didn't speak English, but when it came time to pay the fine, her English was flawless.
> the inspector didn't speak English
Next time, if that happens again, you need to be more assertive, by going with a: "Ma vai fanculo, vai!" (difficult to translate), followed by a more mellow "io non pago niente!" (I won't pay anything), and physically try to make a way out of the whole situation.
Granted, I'm not an Italian and I don't live in Italy, but I do live in a city very similar to Rome in many other aspects, and I've seen myself around these parts how foreign tourists are sometimes "hunted" for fines the same as it happened to you. In many cases those applying the abusive fines go for the "easy prey", as soon as you show some hints of fighting back they let you go, so to speak, not worth the hassle for them (especially as they also know that they're doing something very shitty and abusive).
Being assertive is fine, but surely starting off with telling an officer to go fuck themselves as your opening gambit is a bit bold?
Hard for Americans to understand, but people interface differently with authority figures who don’t carry guns or have a license to murder at will.
I think they were trying to physically make a way out, but there was no ticket scanner for the bus.
Also visited rome about s month ago, no issues but only traveled by subway and used mu credit card.
Paris has about the worst card system I have ever seen. In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.
In Paris you have the following (at least you did a year ago):
- Paper tickets
- Prepaid, non-nominative cards that can be used for single trips and day-long unlimited travel plans, but no more than that
- Prepaid, nominative cards that support day-long and week-long travel plans, but not single trips
- Nominative cards that can do all of the above and more, but only for locals
- There is also the app, that has other limitations
And there is also some weirdness with connections. Metro to train may or may not be possible on a single ticket. Metro to RER usually is, but Metro to tram is not, unless maybe if you have the right card.
Why can't they do a single card that does everything, like in all other countries? Or maybe two, a non-nominative and a nominative one.
>In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.
Yep, this is how it is in Japan (but without the account bit). You buy a Suica or Passmo card at the airport when you arrive for 500 yen, "charge" it with a bunch of cash (which you helpfully get at the 7-bank ATM down the hall), then you can use that *everywhere in the whole country* for public transit, and many other things too if you want, like vending machines and many restaurants. (It's generally better to use a credit card for places that take it, but still, the option exists.) There's no advantage for locals either; everyone gets the same card, and it's not linked to any account.
Finally, when you're ready to leave the country, you can visit the customer service counter and surrender the card, and they will give you (in cash) the remaining balance on the card, plus the 500 yen deposit.
Also, unlike in Paris, you don't have to worry about any rude service people in Japan. Everyone is always polite here.
The Dutch made some similar mistakes. A certain number of discounts (amongst them any sort of child-rate fares!) are only available with a personal OV chipkaart, but
a) for a long time a personal card was only obtainable with a Dutch bank account and/or address of residence
b) the only improvement these days is that residents of the countries with a direct border with the Netherlands (i.e. Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) can get one, too, but it still needs to be ordered in advance. And anybody else is still left out, even though e.g. a resident of Lille (in France) is actually living closer to the Dutch border than a German from Munich.
Another thing is that with the switch from paper tickets to the OV chipkaart they sort of got rid of cross-operator through tickets, which means that
a) e.g. when travelling on the national railway network, you now need to pay attention whether you're also changing train operators when happening to change trains – in that case you must check out and back in again
b) checking out and back in resets reset the distance-based fare price degression, so it's more expensive. I think they continued tweaking some things here, so it's no longer quite as egregious as when originally introduced, but it's still somewhat of a step back compared to real through tickets.
And for anonymous chipkaarts there's a relatively high minimum top-up (technically 20 €, effectively 16 € as you're allowed 4 € of overdraft) required in order to be allowed to travel on the railways at all, which is unattractive for occasional travellers and shortish trips that might otherwise only cost a few euro (in which case a single use ticket might be a better option, as it "only" carries an 1 € surcharge).
I recently travelled to Paris a few times as a tourist. I normally travelled by train and metro. But on the last trip, a bus was much faster according to google maps.
Researched and knew the bus that would take me to my hotel. Checked google and the physical sign at the bustop at Gare de L'est. It confirmed you can buy a ticket on the bus. Tried to board a bus and got yelled at by another customer and the driver for not knowing I have to buy a ticket ahead of time at a machine or use "SMS ticket" which I wasn't eager to use and probably wouldn't even have worked on my foreign phone plan.
OK, I happen to know from previous bad experience I can't buy a ticket anywhere nearby the bus stop but have to go to the basement in the station to buy a ticket which is located at the entrance to the metro. The lineup is 20 people deep and the machine is SLOW to use. Definitely takes 2-3 minutes per person. After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris, confirm your address, and even then it takes 2-3 weeks to get one. There is a card you can get as a tourist, but it's only useful for expensive day passes, not for taking 1-2 euro trips. Is there another solution for paying for transit? Maybe, but good luck finding out what it is, I certainly could not in 10 minutes of googling or asking my French friends.
The solution was a 30 euro taxi ride.
Paris the the number 1 tourist destination on the planet, a travel hub city, has a great public transportation system, and from my experience is a great place for travel and probably to live. It's sad that they discontinued a simple metro ticket and require a special card to travel that is not readily available to tourists (or if it is, I certainly couldn't figure out a way to board a bus or predict how to board the metro next year). From personal experience, throughout the entire world, I have never experienced not being able to board public transit by using cash or credit card either on board or from a nearby, working ticket machine. I have experienced simply using cash, using my tap to pay card, or missing one train/bus due to figuring out how to find a local ticket card or transit card. Only in Paris have I literally given up and taken a taxi.
> After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris
That hasn’t been true for years. Anyone can get a pay-as-you-go card which you can top up from your phone or a machine inside every station. The only issue is that you have to buy them either from a counter in a station or from one of the numerous approved shops.
You can also pay the bus from inside. I don’t know what you are talking about. From the tone of your post, you probably didn’t bother saying hello and just started talking in English so the driver told you to get lost.
Paris is so openly hostile to tourists (strangers were more helpful than staff). I’m happy to visit everywhere else as we do more visits to Europe.
Paris is fine for tourists. People just expect to be treated with politeness and decency which is not how Americans generally behave with staff.
Just say hi, please, thank you, ask people if they speak English or show a minimum of contrition when talking directly in English to show you realise it would be nicer to speak the language of the land, everything will be fine.
It’s puzzling to me why people expect things to go well visiting France without studying what’s considered polit and what’s not. It’s the capital of a country. It’s not Disneyland.
My wife and I were plenty polite, like I said many of our interactions with everyday people were fine. It was some of the workers in restaurants and hotels that were rude. There was also the pickpocket at the train station impersonating a station worker (thankfully we ignored them and the attendant in the booth told them to go away).
It’s OK though. It’s your city. We’re happy to visit elsewhere and I’m sure you’re happy we’re not there, silly Americans that we are.
While I'm sure you knew to say please and thank you, and at least try to use their language, you also can't really deny some of your countrymen have given you a poor reputation. It's come to the point that your reputation is so bad, the common advice is to impersonate Canadians.
Were the Parisiens wrong to be rude? Probably. Could they have simply learned from other Americans that being rude is the default? I would assume so. I'm not saying it's your fault, just that it can be easier to assume the next Americans will be as loud and obnoxious as the last ones.
There is a difference I think between getting a lesser or more reserved level of friendliness and getting outright rudeness and hostility.
The service is awful in Paris. You dont need to be offended by that fact.
Only parisians can get used to it.
Seriously service is very much fine in Paris. Most people are very nice. It’s always Americans complaining about it. I witness it everyday. Most American tourist expects service to be nice for no reason, is unpleasant, goes to the wrong person and then is surprised people are rude.
Stop acting like you are owed something. It’s all going to get better.
Even provincial French people I know complain about Parisiens being rude and unhelpful. Personally I’ve never had an issue as an English person who learned metropolitan French at school. Montreal though… wow.
> Stop acting like you are owed something. It’s all going to get better.
Why do you assume I am American or something? Travel just anywhere on Earth and you will be better served than in Paris.
> The service is awful in Paris.
It really depends where you end up.
The popular and/or well situated places tend to not give a shit, because what will you do? You're just one of a thousand customers waiting to get there, so screw you.
More standard places however, tend to be like any other places I witnessed in Europe, i.e. filled with run-of-the-mill merchants happy to get business.
Which explain the difference of experience between Parisians and tourists: the latter are (rightfully) shocked by prices and service in the shitty tourist trap on rue de Rivoli or Montmartre, which absolutely does not reflect the experience of the former in the little Georgian restaurant or their favorite bistro three streets down their flat.
Travelling to Paris for ~ 15 years as I have some family there, I never, ever used a bus: either RER, regular subway or walking (I walked 10+ km several times). I found the experience of bus tickets for tourists a hit or miss across Europe, either big cities not friendly with tourists (some: especially inaccessible with people not speaking the local language, mostly in Germany) or positively surprised when things were a lot simpler than I thought in unexpected places. For public transportation, this lack of consistency is bad.
>After 10 minutes of googling about cards for tourists I have learned that you can only get a card if you live in Paris, confirm your address, and even then it takes 2-3 weeks to get one. There is a card you can get as a tourist, but it's only useful for expensive day passes, not for taking 1-2 euro trips.
They failed you, because such a card exists and is called the Navigo Easy, costs €2, and you can load individual trips on it. Unfortunately the machines don't sell the cards yet, so you have to talk to a human.
It's almost as if the RATP doesn't want tourists to use it though. From their website on the pass (https://www.ratp.fr/en/titres-et-tarifs/passe-navigo-easy)
> Do you want to take trips on the metro, bus or tram? Do you want a rechargeable pass? The Navigo Easy pass is made for you!
> Ideal for : Les touristes et les clients voyageant occasionnellement
There's also a table further down the page that's only available in French that explains which fare combinations are allowed (ie. cannot load both a full fare and reduced fare on the same card). Although even if one reads French, it's not clear what the orange cell means, so maybe the RATP just hates all of its customers. :-)
It's in French, is that why you are saying they don't want tourists to use it?
Otherwise, it basically says: Ideal for tourists and occasional travellers.
I think that's the gist - the table is confusing and complex even for a French speaker.
"Tourist" cards should always be "you can ride basically everything" and "more expensive than if you know what you're doing". I have no idea what a "day pass" on the Metro is, but tourists will gladly pay more for something they don't have to think about and works everywhere.
I purchased these for my family on my last trip, and it took a little work; I had to go to the office in the train station, then ask, there was confusion with the Navigo vs the Navigo Easy. In the end, it worked, and the $2 cost of the card was covered by the discount on the 10-ride pack.
That said, the just-use-your-credit card system in London is way better.
The same is going on here in Barcelona. They have the new electronic ticket but you need to pay for it, then get it sent to your home and it's not anonymous like most of the paper ones were.
You can get one on your phone too but it still doesn't solve the anonymity problem. Even if you get it on the phone you need to submit photo ID first :( Still a royal pain for tourists too.
They also (next year) want to stop the super easy 1,10 euro per trip (any trip any mode) tariff. Which also makes everything easy because there's no need to do an exit scan. Besides the hassle that the paper tickets were (they become unreadable if you look at them wrong) I don't really see any positives to this new system.
Besides that it has taken many more years and millions to introduce than planned. And it's already been hacked before it went live because someone didn't change the admin/admin passwords on the website... Gotta love government operations.
> Even if you get it on the phone you need to submit photo ID first
Why do they need ID for city travel tickets? That's just crazy. Really crazy. Where will all this madness end? Why isn't anyone saying: "Hey, asking for ID data in order to travel by bus is pure China-like craziness!"?
Discount/subsidies for locals
That's a shame. I just paid for a T-casual with cash and it worked beautifully throughout the week despite becoming a crumpled mess by the end of my trip.
NYC is moving to a system called OMNY, where you can either hunt down a retailer with the cards or just use tap-to-pay. I suspect many casual riders will use the latter because of the low friction, but it's indeed not anonymous.
NYC tap to pay is a beautiful system. Seamless with any mobile phone, and if you have an apple watch the integration is insane -- just put the watch near the reader and it knows it's a transit reader and just works, no need to even initiate payment.
> Besides the hassle that the paper tickets were (they become unreadable if you look at them wrong)
Or the paper ticket is even slightly bent. Or bent in half. Or mildly wet. Or a corner is folded. Or sometimes it looks fine but just won't work. Or it works at one station but not another.
I say all that because each situation happened to me on my visit to Barcelona this summer :)
I also had a problem where I had to basically rebuy a new 10-trip ticket twice within a day of each other, because the first got folded in a bag, and the other I thought I misplaced (only to find it at the absolute bottom of a heavily packed shopping bag). Oh and the one day I tried to get my folded ticket replaced, the only station I passed through was closed early! How convenient :)
Basically, those paper tickets WERE a pain. But I don't like the new photo ID cards they're introducing either. Good luck I suppose...
>They also (next year) want to stop the super easy 1,10 euro per trip (any trip any mode) tariff.
Do you have a source for that?
> only specific models, and no iPhones
More like only recent-ish Samsung phones. Complete shitshow.
Hey when all you have is a hammer…
It’s supposedly going to be fixed next year.
It took ages to reach an agreement with Apple which was offering extortionate rates for allowing their customers to use the NFC chip in their phones in a classic Apple move.
Me too, but I don't have a local bank account. You can't sign up for a Navigo Liberté (pay as you go card) without a local IBAN (which is illegal, there is an EU law that anyone accepting bank transfers needs to treat accounts from all EU member states equally). So I buy paper tickets. This is really dumb. Paper tickets work, just leave it alone.
Paris’s paper tickets work until you keep it in your pocket next to your phone and the strip demagnetizes. Happened to me twice before I figured out what was happening.
Just for information: you can ask to have it replaced at any station that has human presence
Welcome to public transport just about everywhere. It's fine if you're a local or a frequent enough traveler to one of the cities where you have an app and/or a contactless card.
A first-time visitor who is jet-lagged and may not speak the language? Sorry you're not our priority--even at the airport.
> where you have an app and/or a contactless card
London gets this (mostly) right, because there "contactless card" includes Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Maestro credit and debit cards, and smartphones with equivalent contactless payment. The local transport card (Oyster) is only needed for other fares (e.g. child-rate tickets) or season tickets of a month or longer.
Travel from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports is included in this.
(The only thing they could improve is the signage at Heathrow. They promote the expensive Heathrow Express train, when many people would be better taking an Elizabeth Line train on the same rails — 15 minutes slower and ¼ the price.)
(One more thing, last month they seem to have introduced a £5-£7 cost to get an Oyster card, which seems needlessly extortionate for visitors that do need them. Years ago it was a small deposit, which you could get returned in cash at the machine.)
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets...
> London gets this (mostly) right, because there "contactless card" includes Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Maestro credit and debit cards
Lyon and many other French cities do this already anyway.
I dislike it because it's about the opposite of anonymous.
I noticed last time I was in London there seemed to be more choices; I already have an Oyster Card anyway.
Systems do seem to be getting more standardized in general although the user experience for a first time visitor to a city--especially if they haven't checked things out ahead of time--isn't necessarily great because they can't really depend on just tapping a credit card on a reader.
is stansted included? I always buy ticket through traveline and I dont think you can get through the train gates with card payment..
> Passengers are not able to use Oyster cards or contactless payment cards on the Stansted Express services to Stansted Airport. It is advised that passengers book tickets in advance or, alternatively purchase tickets at the train station. By booking in advance you are able to save money on their journeys.
https://www.stanstedairport.com/getting-to-and-from/by-stans...
You are correct. I read "The addition of Luton Airport Parkway to stations accepting pay as you go means that four of London’s airports are now accessible by simply using contactless." [1]. The other is London City Airport, not Stansted.
1] https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/pay-you-go-contactless-tak...
>They promote the expensive Heathrow Express train
For that matter something like the Piccadilly Line is more convenient depending upon where you're going to.
I have an Oyster Card but there seem to be a lot of options these days.
More and more cities like Sydney and Singapore accept credit cards NFC for payment. Tap and go, zero setup required.
Even NYC lets you tap a credit card at the turnstile. Get with the times
Automated machines distribute cards for a few months already. I was used to take tickets by 10, and got a card last time.
The machines are being equipped with card dispensers; you can see them in modern machines when they are open for maintenance or money collection. They're just not ready yet.
I'm testing the beta version of their Android ticket software and it works pretty well (and not limited to Samsung phones). It should be available soon I think.
Please just use the same system london does. I dont need another useless app just to buy a ticket...
I dont want to think about tickets. I am happy to pay the price but just let me not think about it. Like I was travelling to La Defense, and my ticket did not work.. How I am supposed to know that this isnt part of the same system when the tube goes there.. just charge me whats appropriate and let me be..
The system in London works well enough when you are staying in the city. But the gates are difficult to use if you are traveling with luggage. And I don't really like having to validate the ticket twice on each trip. I prefer a honor system where you can simply board the train without any additional hassle.
An honor system is great if you want to run a free transit system. Every honor system train I've encountered soon devolves into a case of 90% or more of passengers simply not paying. That's fine if that's the goal but it's no way to run a system where fares are expected to fund it in any meaningful way.
I find that a useful test. If an honor system doesn't work, it's probably not a society I want to live in.
In Helsinki, local trains, trams, and the metro have used an honor system as long as I can remember. According to the estimates I've seen, only 3-5% of people don't pay.
This!
When I lived in Munich, my dad visited and on one of our U-Bahn trips he mentioned how easy it is to travel without paying as there are no barriers anywhere. I replied that it is also ridiculously easy to actually pay for your trip, and the prices are fair was well. Yay for the honor system!
It was a delight using public transport there, and every metro or tram stop had a working ticketing machine with multiple options, accepting both cash and cards. In contrast to many other places.
Getting rid of the paper cards in Paris seems premature, if I read about the current alternatives, or lack thereof.
in prague a lot of tourists don't pay. I think sometimes its because they dont care and sometimes because it is inconvinient / they dont know how etc. Also the paper tickets have an expiry so it is easy to forgot about that. Making paying as convinient as possible is imho the best way to increase revenue from public transportation...
we have that system in prague, it requires employing bunch of weirdos who go around randomly and check peoples tickets. They usually catch somebody. Often times tourists.
I have to admit that I have also used to ride without ticket when I was younger.
I loved visiting paris this summer but was surprised by how archaic and slow the machines were too buy tickets. I also found it amusing how there are at least three different interfaces/machine styles throughout the system. I made the mistake of buying a one way ticket to Versailles. I missed the train back home although I was twenty minutes early because the line to buy a ticket took forever. At least two minutes per customer
>there are at least three different interfaces/machine styles
Yes!! This drove me nuts.
Not only are there different UIs, but the physical UX differed sometimes too! I really, really want to know who's idea it was to implement the rollbar they have on the machines, because that absolutely does not work well. And the fact it rolled on one machine up and down, and on the next it's reversed??
I hate buying mobile tickets but sometimes it's just so much more convenient.
Hey, you came back with a story to tell and discussions to have.
I'm sure there's things about your country and my country that are sub-optimal, and things about Paris that are better than our own countries.
That's the fun in traveling and learning about different cultures.
Personally I hated the smoking everywhere, but loved the food available. Pain au chocolat and baguettes. Nice.
Absolutely! I had a great time in Paris and felt fortunate I was able to go visit. I was just commenting about the metro system which could use some UX attention and consistency on an article about the Paris Metro. I hope my comment doesn’t dissuade anyone from going!
> Pain au chocolat and baguettes. Nice.
Pain au chocolat, yes ! Chocolatine, no !
Versailles ticket was so hard to buy, way faster to just have the human at the window do it.
That's a long time. Some things have been around longer: brothel tokens date from the 1st century to the early 1900's. Roman brothel tokens were used in London, and Upton Sinclair wrote about 'brass check' tokens used in his youth (1919).
I visited a few European countries this past summer and Paris was definitely not the best in terms of public transport tickets. I had to buy the paper 3 day visitor pass from Orly after finding no way as an iPhone user to purchase a ticket on the Île-de-France Mobilités app or their website. Constant fear of losing my $50 euro investment that's a mere 6.5cm x 3cm rectangle.
Some cities had the tap to pay gates which were by far the most convenient option as an Apple Pay user. Others like Berlin or Wien had working mobile tickets.
First day in my visit to Paris this summer, I passed by a Navigo machine that seemed to be stuck in a locked boot state. I guess the internal IDE drive died if it was stuck searching.
Image: https://i.imgur.com/N3oD09H.jpg
Text ID Transcript
Just interesting what's powering systems like these!Lol. The last time I was in Paris, I must have lost 20-30€ of metro tickets. I kept the tickets in the same pocket as my smart phone, and when I took it out of my pocket the tickets would fall out with it. Having lived there on and off over the years I still have the yellow and later purple tickets, some of them unused. Anyway, ideally it would be nice to have an NFC style solution where you would be charged on exit (for the metro/RER at least) so that you would not have to figure out the proper fare ahead of time. Bus would be a flat rate. And while we are at it, make the fare system simpler (though some old-timers may remember when you needed multiple tickets for long, multi-zone bus rides -- at least those days are gone).
I’m a bit confused. In NYC we recently completed the swap to Omny which supports any contactless payment - physical card, apple pay, google pay, etc. This is available in all trains and buses. The only exception is when transferring to the airport’s air train which still required a metro card though this will be remedied in the near future.
When I was in London this year I could do the same - tap in and tap out (with anything that supported tap to pay) since the cost depends on the distance.
Is there not a similar system available in France to replace the physical tickets?
Is the only option a special card you have to purchase ahead of time and then separately load money into?
Surprising this is poorly planned from the same country that was so quick to adopt the chip in credit cards.
Paper tickets were the only affordable alternative when we visited Paris for a week during the summer. There was a "pay-go" card that cost a bunch upfront and you could charge it with 10 or so trips at a time (and you couldn't share it either, so each family member needed a separate one).
I've used Bolt (a cheaper Uber alternative) a bunch, though taxis in general don't seem very family friendly (several cars refused to pick us up - a family of 4 - because they apparently only take 2-3 passengers in the back seats).
I've always been curious about that as a kid: how's the magnetic strip encoded, on the ticket? Couldn't find any articles on that after a quick search.
The data format on each type of magnetic stripe is different, for example a common bank card https://www.magtek.com/content/documentationfiles/d99800004....
More general physics of it all: https://jacobo.tarrio.org/2014/how-magnetic-stripe-cards-wor... , but the specific encoding on the Metro system tickets would likely have to be reverse engineered if someone hasn't done it already
I worked on a project to emulate them a long time ago :) https://hackaday.com/2009/09/23/universal-cc/
Hopefully I will be in Paris and Rome in the near future. What is the equivalent of Uber in Paris and Rome?
More surveillance then.
is there any evidence of ticketing system being used for that? (not saying it isnt happening. )
If it can be used for that, it will.