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Comment by baud147258 | Hacker News Reader

The train infrastructure is not perfect, the biggest issue being travels not going to/from Paris: the lines aren't as good and there aren't a lot of high-speed lines.

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And they’re expensive compared to flying the equivalent route/distance.

But save you from the pain of getting to/from CDG.

Getting to CDG...by train...is pretty easy.

Traveling by train through Paris is a PITA as it often involves a station transfer via bus.

You can always do the transfer via metro (and there will be at most one change). The metro isn't very well suited if you travel with a lot of luggage though.

When I was transiting in Paris from Lausanne to Lyon, there was no metro connection between the Gares. That was 2006, things could be different now.

Wouldn't you be more likely to make that connection in Geneva rather than in Paris?

Sorry, I meant Nantes, not Lyon. Come to think of it, I’ve never been to Lyon, not sure why I got those two cities mixed up. It wouldn’t make sense to go to Paris just to go to Lyon. :)

Aha! According to Google Maps, there are some options for making this journey today that will use the Paris Metro, but you would still have to change metro lines en route between Gare de Lyon and Gare Montparnasse (the "one change" that littlestymaar mentioned)

It's possible that these options already existed in 2006 but were complicated or inconvenient enough that no one or no web site suggested them to you.

The bus is a much quicker direct transfer, a metro transfer isn’t that viable.

I'm puzzled: the Lausanne-Paris arrives in _Gare de Lyon_, which is also the station where you take the train to Lyon. Then on a Lausanne-Lyon via Paris you wouldn't even need to change stations.

I have and idea of what could have happened though: maybe you took a cheaper train which doesn't arrives or leaves in Paris itself, but in a train station in suburbs (Marne la vallée, Massy Palaiseau and Roissy Charles de Gaulle).

I mistyped, I meant Nantes, not Lyon. I think the train did arrive at gare Lyon and we had to bus transfer to another station.

It depends, when you buy the tickets 3 month in advance, it can be really competitive. On short-notice trips, it's often too expensive indeed.

I hope they wouldn't use those agressive algorithm for dynamic pricing. This is a public service, have a static pricing! This turns the train into a luxury, at times almost three times as expensive as air travel.

static pricing leads to sold out seats and poor planning by customers. It negates the ability to add capacity in advance for busy times and leads to poor efficiency overall (even completely ignoring the inconvenience of being stranded to passengers).

True, my point of view might not take everything into account, but for trains, the ability to add capacity is limited, mostly constrained by tracks leased time.

For the train I take to go back home, the price varies between 35€ and 220€. This is excessive! And not much better than sold-out seats..

45 euro for 500 km in 2 hours, no security. I don't think flights are any cheaper; certainly not if you factor in your time.

I'm currently planning a trip where I'm considering going from Strasbourg to Toulouse. Over 7 hours on the fastest train itinerary, versus a 1.5 hour flight. Not that difficult a decision.

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