ParisByTrain.com

[KG19]

After travelling on the Metro to Denfert-Rochereau, my wife and I walked onto the platform for the RER to Charles De Gaulle Airport. My wife looked for a ticket machine or office on the platform and there did not appear to be any. Please note this was on a Sunday. A train arrived and we boarded. During the journey I stopped the Guard as he was passing and asked to purchase tickets. He charged us 50 Euros. We had paid just over 16 Euros for the same journey on the inward leg. I am aware that I was charged a Penalty Fare, but it appeared that we did not have the opportunity to buy tickets before this point. I explained this to the Guard, who seemed to be suggesting that we should have left the train at some point during the journey and purchased tickets off-train. As a railway employee in the UK I am not totally naieve, but I find it hard to believe we were expected to get off mid-journey and purchase tickets to avoid a penalty.
Can someone with experience let me know if we simply didn't look hard enough at Denfert-Rochereau, or were we harshly treated ?

[ben]

Hi KG,

The treatment you received by the "controller" was par for the course actually. There are no "regular" ticket sales beyond turnstiles nor on platforms.

The confusing thing about the Metro & the RER system is that they overlap... and that Metro tickets (Ticket t+) can be used for only a part of the RER system (i.e. RER Zone 1). That means you can easily step onto a train that will take you far beyond the validity of the ticket with which entered the network. And the transit authority, RATP, has not devised some ingenious method to explain nor ameliorate the situation.

In London, buying a single fare for the Tube will result in the most expensive ticket possible: 4£, which will cover the entire network, thus eliminating the problem you experienced. The Oyster Card, which is brilliant and much more flexible than Carte Orange/Passe Navigo, also solves the issue by intelligently charging the correct fare based on zones traveled.

Hopefully Paris will one day understand the power of the Oyster Card system and switch to a similar solution.

I'm sorry you had this experience. It's not enjoyable and it's very easy to make this type of mistake.

For any trip from central Paris to either Charles de Gaulle airport or Orly, we're supposed to purchase a Billet Ile-de-France, which we use for the entire trip, on both Metro and RER, to get us to our destination.

Best regards,

Ben

[KG19]

Many thanks, Ben. I do wish we'd looked into the travel details more thoroughly before travelling. Lesson learned !